Bugs in software are inevitable. As software gets released, it is almost impossible to be bug-free. The users will always find a way to break the software, then the developers will fix it. In this period, the most important metric is the time needed to fix a bug. Of course, some cases alert the whole company, mostly related to security issues and they get fixed in one day. But the average bug-fixing time affects customer satisfaction.
Open-source wins the race
Google’s Project Zero has made research regarding the fixing timings among the software companies that has some interesting results. According to the research, Linux is the fastest operating system in bug fixing. Between 2019 and 2021, Linux had 25 bugs and they were all fixed in an average of 25 days. One of the most trusted companies for its bug-fixing abilities, Apple, had 84 bugs in the same period and they were fixed in average 69 days. Google and Microsoft spent 44 and 83 days respectively on average to fix the bugs. You can see the full list below:
Looking at the year-by-year bug fixing performance stats, Linux had an average of 32 days to fix the bugs in 2019. In 2021, the developers managed to make it 15 days.
In the mobile phone area, the results are very similar between iOS and Android for both Google’s and Samsung’s devices.
On the web browser side, Google Chrome seems like they had the most bugs but also they are the fastest to fix them.
The results are mostly interesting, especially on the Linux side. The software and tech giants with almost limitless resources fall way behind a community-driven operating system. The reason might either be the bureaucracy problem in the big companies or the power of open-source; or even both.