NewsForge: Is Geodesic’s Free Gift Helping Mozilla Development?

“Michael Spertus, of Geodesic Systems, has set up a free online
demo version of his company’s Great Circle software, a real-time
error detection and code diagnosis tool, specifically for Mozilla
developers. He says Mozilla leaders have been ‘supportive,’ but he
has no way of knowing just how helpful Great Circle has been to the
Mozilla development process.

“The demo itself is rather interesting. It can pinpoint areas
within Mozilla that account for some of the program’s largest
problems, identifying them almost down to the offending line of
code. Think of this as a mechanized aid to the idea of ‘many eyes
make all bugs shallow’ that allows human developers to skip the
annoying step of reading through the millions of lines of code
(literally) in Mozilla and go straight to some of the major bugs
and fix them.

“Since the Mozilla Great Circle demo requires no login or other
identification from users, Spertus has no way of telling how many
Mozilla developers have accessed his site or what they have done
with the information it has given them. ‘It’s hard to tell with the
Mozilla community because it’s so decentralized,’ he says. ‘I don’t
actually know how much they have been using the tool…'”

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