Apache scalped by software code analyst

The code used to write the Apache web server is no better than many of its commercial rivals', a new report has claimed.

In recent tests, software inspection firm Reasoning concluded that the much-touted Apache had as many weaknesses in its code as its rivals, contradicting claims made by its community of open source developers.

Reasoning, which inspected the code of the V2.1 Apache open source web server, found that it had a similar defect density compared to several commercial equivalents.

In the study, the company found 31 software defects in 58,944 lines of source code of the Apache http server V2.1.

Defect density, defined as the number of defects found per thousand lines of source code, is considered to be a key reliability indicator.

The Apache code inspected scored 0.53 per thousand lines of source code, while the commercial average defect density came to 0.51 per thousand.

A similar study in February by Reasoning concluded that open source had a significantly lower defect density than commercial equivalents.

The new findings suggest that, as software applications mature, there is a correlation between code inspection, or peer review, and defect density.

The Reasoning report can be found here.