This fails to consider the likelyhood of new logic bugs being introduced in any rewrite that didn't exist in the previous code. Unfortunately, I don't think there's good numbers available to estimate any numbers on these. But judging by the huge array of topics listed with bugs there (TFTP, NTLM, IMAP, Krb5, ...) I'm gonna say it's not possible to make a statement either way on whether the balance would be overall positive or negative.
FWIW we have the same problem with a large 1996-started C codebase with a lot of logic complexity (routing protocols.) Our best guess - amplified by the fact that we don't do a lot of complex string/memory ops, but rather complicated algorithms - is that a rewrite would introduce worse bugs. But I'm not sure on that either.
FWIW we have the same problem with a large 1996-started C codebase with a lot of logic complexity (routing protocols.) Our best guess - amplified by the fact that we don't do a lot of complex string/memory ops, but rather complicated algorithms - is that a rewrite would introduce worse bugs. But I'm not sure on that either.
(Would be a nice MSc or PhD thesis topic...)