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. He was twice awarded MVP for Microsoft .NET, and is a founder and the CTO of Quick180.Com More about Brendan at https://www.linkedin.com/codebetter
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  • 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.