Canonical MAAS awarded as best quality software by TIOBE

by Mikel Azkarate on 29 July 2025

We are very proud to share that Canonical’s MAAS User Interface has been ranked as the top-quality software project in its category by the quarterly TIOBE Software Quality Assurance Award. MAAS (Metal as a Service) is an open source tool that enables automated provisioning, configuration, and management of physical servers (bare metal) in data centers. It treats physical machines like cloud instances, allowing dynamic allocation and scaling of hardware resources. TIOBE’s recognition reflects both the exceptional engineering behind MAAS and Canonical’s ongoing commitment to quality management and open source excellence. 

Screenshot of MAAS UI

How the TIOBE ranking works 

TIOBE is a leading vendor that conducts software quality assessments. They currently assess more than 8,000 software projects worldwide. TIOBE Software BV provides a complete framework based on the ISO 25010 international standard for quality, checking strict metrics for security, reliability or maintainability defined within the Tiobe Quality Index (TQI). Canonical works with TIOBE to obtain  an independent overview of its code quality as part of our ongoing commitment to engineering excellence. 

MAAS: An elegant UI with code quality at its core

TIOBE regularly recognizes the best quality projects with the quarterly TIOBE Software Quality Assurance Award. Canonical’s MAAS UI ‘ reached the #1 spot among all mid-sized projects (defined as having between 100,000 and 500,000 lines of code), a category comprising over 1,200 projects around the globe. 

We are excited to see our efforts recognized in the industry. In the words of Paul Jansen, CEO at TIOBE Software : “It is amazing to see how quickly MAAS UI embraced our code quality system and achieved such high quality ratings”.

Embracing the quality system was a thoughtful journey. The system was configured together with TIOBE. Following initial measurements, the continuous integration of the analysis was put in place, allowing to set a reliable and consistent data source for the team. The most important step came right after, where a careful analysis of the metrics in the quality system was done, helping to establish the right conversations – ie –  “Doing the Right Thing”. Finally, it was a win for the codebase and a huge win on the TIOBE Quality Assurance Award.

Behind the MAAS UI  

The MAAS UI is a  React-based web interface. It provides an intuitive dashboard for administrators to help manage and automate the datacenter. Aspects such as machine lifecycle management, network infrastructure and services configuration are streamlined thanks to the intuitive web user interface.

Some  MAAS UI highlights include:

• Modern & responsive:  Built with React, offering a smoother user experience.
• Real-time updates: Live status tracking of machines and tasks.
• Improved workflows: Simplified machine deployment and network configuration.
• Extensible architecture: Easier to maintain and add new features.
• Integration with MAAS API: Fully leverages MAAS’s REST API for seamless operations.
• Flexible mock query resolvers, with functions for successful and error responses.

Try MAAS and check what the UI looks like

Getting started with MAAS is as simple as following the step-by-step 30 minute tutorial, which walks you through the entire installation process in a sandboxed environment. Try it out, experience the UI and share your feedback with the community on Discourse.

Check out the documentation  or visit the MAAS webpage if you want to learn more.