Actually, this was argued primarily by the 'open source' software movement. Stallman may have made such an assertion, but as a secondary question, and not as the major idea behind the Free Software philosophy. As Ravi has mentioned, this is one of the key distinctions between the so called 'open source' on one hand and 'free software' poles. 'F/OSS' is a term used to describe the broad sweep of similar licensing approaches. There is no one dominant rationale or motivtion behind such licensing. 'F/OSS' didn't argue anything. I think in certain respects (such as some security issues) suchopenness might help facilitate the production of less buggy code in the end, but only in conjunction with the right cultural and organisational context of the developers.
-AA.
-- Ambrose Andrews LPO box 8274 ANU Acton ACT 0200 Australia http://www.vrvl.net/~ambrose/ mailto:ambrose at vrvl.net voicemail:+61_261112936 work:+61_261256749 mobile:+61_415544621 irc:{undernet|freenode|oftc}:znalo xmpp:ambrose at jabber.fsfe.org skype:znalo7 CE38 8B79 C0A7 DF4A 4F54 E352 2647 19A1 DB3B F823 556A 6D19 0904 827C 9DB8 3697 32D0 1E11 403F 2BE1