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There's some sensationalism in the editorialising around this piece, but I find it hard to argue with the core of what Gates is saying. You're not going to be
by halo 17y ago
There's some sensationalism in the editorialising around this piece, but I find it hard to argue with the core of what Gates is saying.
You're not going to be able to sell a piece of software based on the idea that it has less bugs. People expect software to be bug-free. When people buy a new version of a product, people expect new features. I mean, history has proven him completely correct - today, vendors provide free updates in their software to fix bugs and sell new versions with more features.
Secondly, you're always going to have bugs. It's inevitable. What's important is that your software, both in terms of design and testing, is resilient enough to avoid major bugs that a large proportion of people will run into. Historically, Microsoft were good at this - there's a reason they were behind "Writing Solid Code". What remains are bugs which are quirks and corner cases, which are generally less important and are harder to test for. Of course, the situation with security is rather different, as certain quirks and corner cases can have serious unintended repercussions.
- thwarted 17y agoI think it's worth making a distinction between "buying" a new version and "obtaining" a new version (where "buying" includes software that is charged for, even if you pirate it and don't pay for it). That is, the difference is between proprietary software and open source software. When I pay money for software, I expect new features. When I go to download open source software, 9 times out of 10 I want the specific bug I'm dealing with to be fixed (and often it is). Heh, and often the bug I want fixed is that the software is lacking a certain feature -- but I've seen a lot of "issues" and "bug reports" listing feature requests, so the feature gets treated like a bug. Proprietary software is marketed in such a way that the latest version is all that you'll ever need, rarely are its deficiencies mentioned, and they definitely won't be mentioned as actionable "bugs".
- pietro 17y agoThe "versions" you're comparing aren't the same thing. Windows has a new version in the open source sense every month, and it's distributed automatically.