Many eyeballs mean shallow bugs
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By Tina Gasperson
May 1, 2008 —
Software testing and quality assurance is an art, and its practitioners are creative, curious and innovative. Their perfect studio? An open-source environment, because it attracts those who are gifted at figuring out how best to put an application through its paces: “Let’s see what would happen if … ”
At the same time, SQA is serious business. End users, whether outside or inside the company, need software that simply works. The community is no slouch either when it comes to producing code as fault-free as possible. The adage, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” (aka Linus’ Law), was originally posited by Eric S. Raymond, the author of “The Cathedral and the Bazaar.”
The vulnerability to attacks of open-source applications like the Apache Web server, compared with that of proprietary server applications, such as IIS, is debatable. But open-source proponents maintain that security flaws in open source get found sooner and fixed more quickly, diminishing the number of vulnerabilities. The benefit of having many eyes looking at your code is that any failure is less likely to happen to your least suspecting user. Instead, you’ve got people who think it is fun to break stuff intentionally look for the flaws, and when they’re found, fix them immediately.
Open-source testing principles can be adopted by any company whose management is comfortable allowing employees devote a portion of their workday to testing software and reporting bugs and failures. Staffers within the IT department can act as white hat hackers with access to prerelease and alpha code, while end users in other departments can beta-test and report bugs and other difficulties.
Brian Behlendorf, CEO of CollabNet, said that it helps to make it easy for employees to report bugs they find. This means establishing a framework ahead of time, like Mozilla’s online feedback system, called Hendrix because of that rock guitarist’s penchant for using sound system feedback as part of his music. Hendrix makes it easy for users to shoot off comments and suggestions, and the page links directly to the more formal bug-reporting mechanism.
Mozilla also offers Litmus, a Web-based, open-source QA tool used internally but is also available for download and use by anyone running Apache, MySQL and Perl. Litmus makes it easier for casual users, who would never write a test case, to test software, though developers can also submit their own test cases. It also acts as a repository for test cases and results, with a specially designed interface that simplifies viewing and creating reports based on those results.
Sharing bugs and test results with the entire community is beneficial because users can save time by searching to see whether a bug has been reported. A good bug and test repository that allows Boolean key word searches would encourage testers to report their findings and reduce demands on tech support.
In Litmus, any user can browse and select active test runs in which to take part and then receive detailed step-by-step instructions and guidance. The results are automatically displayed to the community and the QA managers who designed the test. The potential for greatly enhanced testing and QA output, with far lower costs, is obvious.
—Tina Gasperson
Related Search Term(s): Quality assurance
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