I explicitly don’t want to go over the exact scenario that this is relating to. I want to talk about a general sentiment that I got from several people from Microsoft a few times, which I find annoying.

It can be summed up pretty easily by this quote:

You all know that we work on the Agile process here, right? We get something out (perhaps a little early) and then improve it. Codeplex is for open source and continuous improvement with community feedback.

The context is a response to a critique about unacceptable level of quality in something Microsoft put out. Again, I do not want to discuss the specifics. I want to discuss the sentiment, I got answers in a similar spirit from several Microsoft people recently, and I find it annoying in the extreme.

Agile doesn’t mean that you start with crap, call it organic fertilizer and try to tell me that it will improve in the future. Quality is supposed to be built in, it is the scope that you grow incrementally, not the product quality.

I actually find the open source comment to be even more annoying. Open source does not mean that you get someone else to do your dirty work. And if you take something and call it open source, it doesn’t mean that you are not going to get called on the carpet for the quality of whatever you released.

Calling it open source does not mean that the community is accountable for its quality.