Yes, I was very deliberately not generalizing to all of Open Source. I was exploring these assertions:
> It's not true that just because a product is open source, it will be of good quality.
> [...] it does appear to be true that at the extremes, the best quality software delivery processes are from open source projects.
To turn around your argument, I think your generalizations about "programmers" are too pessimistic. Many of the best Open Source authors enjoy designing good user interfaces and writing good documentation because they want to make something awesome and beautiful. And commercial entities generally won't/can't give software developers free reign to do that because of marketplace pressures to optimize for profitability and value (which are awesome and beautiful in a different way).
> It's not true that just because a product is open source, it will be of good quality.
> [...] it does appear to be true that at the extremes, the best quality software delivery processes are from open source projects.
To turn around your argument, I think your generalizations about "programmers" are too pessimistic. Many of the best Open Source authors enjoy designing good user interfaces and writing good documentation because they want to make something awesome and beautiful. And commercial entities generally won't/can't give software developers free reign to do that because of marketplace pressures to optimize for profitability and value (which are awesome and beautiful in a different way).