Software quality and reliability

Software quality is very important, especially for commercial and system software like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows, Linux, etc. If software is faulty (buggy), it can delete a person’s work, crash the computer and do other unexpected things. Faults and errors are called “bugs” and these are eliminated (debugged) through software testing. It is believed that all large programs have some bugs. All major software companies, such as Microsoft, Novell and Sun Microsystems, have their own software testing departments with the specific goal of just testing. Software can be tested through unit testing, regression testing and other methods, which are done manually, or most commonly, automatically, since the amount of code to be tested can be quite large. For instance, NASA has extremely rigorous software testing procedures for its Space Shuttle and other programs because faulty software can crash the whole program and make the vehicle not functional, at great expense.

There are many software companies in the world and selling software can be quite a profitable industry. For instance, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft was the second richest man in the world in 2008 largely by selling the Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office software programs and the same goes for Larry Ellison largely through his Oracle database software.

There are many non-profit software organizations like the Free Software Foundation, GNU Project, Mozilla Foundation. Also there are many software standards organizations like the W3C and others that try to come up with a software standard so that many software can work and interoperate with each other like through standards such as XML, HTML, HTTP, FTP, etc.

Some large software companies include Microsoft, IBM, Oracle.

Notes

Microsoft Office — пакет программных продуктов фирмы Microsoft, включающий текстовые процессоры (Microsoft Word), СУБД (Microsoft Access), электронные таблицы (Microsoft Excel), электронную почту (Microsoft Outlook) и др. Microsoft Windows — операционная система, выпущенная компанией Microsoft.

Novell, Sun Microsystems — производители аппаратного и программного обеспечения, а также принадлежащие им торговые марки

NASA — сокр. от National Aeronautics and Space Administration, НАСА..

Oracle – корпорация Oracle, выпускающая мощные системы управления базами данных, а также принадлежащая ей торговая марка.

Free Software Foundation — Фонд бесплатного ПО — организация, занимающаяся разработкой и распространением бесплатного и условно-бесплатного программного обеспечения. Основана Ричардом Столманом (Richard Stallman) в 1983 г.

GNU Project — сокр. от “GNU is Not Unix”, проект по свободному распространению программного обеспечения.

Mozilla — прозвище программы Netscape Navigator

W3C — WWWC — World Wide Web Consortium