There is a distinct difference between open-source and outsourced software. For open-source, I can choose to use something that has a known quality standard. If I choose wisely, there is a team behind it, and they have a long-term relationship with the product. None of that is true with outsourced development. Outsourcing development doesn't lower cognitive load. It increases it. Now I get to support something that was written by someone with no skin in the operations game and no long-term relationship with that code.

Quality is defined by the end user. Developers, with little or no interaction with the end user, will struggle to deliver something good. I didn't say that quality is only related to operations. I said that our quality process should be optimized for operations. We should use the exact same quality process to deliver an emergency fix that we use to deliver a feature. Otherwise we will take shortcuts when it's an emergency. Why would anyone use a less safe process in an emergency?

DORA metrics indicate how much friction there is in the development process but not where or why it exists. I wrote a paper about this for IT Revolution called "How to Misuse and Abuse DORA Metrics."