The Linear Software Price/Bug Ratio

Posted by Brendan Tompkins on December 17, 2004

I am now totally convinced that the more you pay for a software package, the crappier the code base and the buggier it is.  Of course, all of my evidence is anecdotal, but here’s a quick graph I threw together that illustrates this.



This is all based on some recent experience with companies, who I’ll not name here…


-Brendan

About Brendan Tompkins

Brendan runs CodeBetter.Com and Devlicio.Us. He is a former MVP for Microsoft .NET and is president of Port Technology Services, a partner with Port Solution Integrators a provider of hardware and software integration services for the transportation and logistics industry.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
  • http://klrylphp.com/ Bcmtqezw

    MLhfYP

  • Brendan Tompkins

    You are correct, mysterious odor from microsoft. :)

  • Mysterious Odor

    In your example, the independent variable is "Dollars Spent" and the dependent variable is "Number of Bugs". The independent variable belongs on the x-axis. In addition to this, your graph does not show a linear relationship between these variables. One last thing, a correlation between two variables does not necessarily imply a causal relationship.

  • andy brummer

    So according to this chart, 0$ = 0 bugs. Sweet!!! Open source really is better. lol

  • Josh Pollard

    But after about 4 $ signs, the bugs level off…. Maybe somewhere in that range is the correct price ;-)

  • Brendan Tompkins

    Mike. Yes, I also found that data point interesting, not sure I’ve isolated all of the variables, but hey, I’m just reporting the data the way I find it.

  • Mike Powell

    Hilarious! The little jog to the right tells me at somewhere around the 3.2 dollar sign price point I can get almost a whole extra bug for about the same money.