Assessing Free/Open Source Software Quality

According to its proponents, one of the most acclaimed advantages of Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) is its superior quality. However, this suggestion is an open issue, since there is little concrete evidence to justify whether F/OSS quality is indeed better or worse than that of proprietary software products. The general perspective of this article is to discuss the current status of F/OSS quality and to assess its performance in various aspects of quality, based on existing literature. Specifically, this article will provide some answers to various questions raised by the assertion concerning the quality of F/OSS. In this regard issues addressed in this article include the quality framework, through which F/OSS quality should be investigated and the performance of F/OSS in various quality factors within this quality framework. Answers to these issues are given by providing evidence from various research papers, empirical studies and reports based on experience about the quality of F/OSS products. The overall results seem to indicate that F/OSS has achieved an acceptable level of quality, although there is more to be done in order to outperform proprietary software.