Bugs in the Kernel
So Andrew mentionned he thinks kernels are getting buggier last week at LinuxTag, yet he has no realdata except his inbox to confirm that.
I think a more likely explanation is just the fact that we're getting better at finding bugs, and getting better (and more) reports from end-users.
Kernels aren't getting buggier.. we just find more bugs.. How many of these bugs are life threatening. ?
Some other questions ... What is growing faster .. the number of contributors, the size of the code , or the number of bugs.
As we don't have exact figures yet... how can we be sure that this is a bad trend ?
It would indeed be bad if the number of bugs is growing at a faster rate than the code base. But given the growth of the code base it might as well be otherwise. We just don't know. It is perfectly possible that eventhough Andrew is getting more bugs reported on a day by day base , the overall stability of the Linux kernel is increasing.
Afterall .. there's Lies, damn Lies and Statistics !