[DUG] A change in upgrade policy coming from Embarcadero

[Kyley Harris]

you know that is is a topic that will just never end in open debate ;)

"I'm sorry, but I would not commit to writing an application and then fixing
any things its users considered bugs gratis for eternity. I would consider
it reasonable for 3 months as long as it was agreed to in the original
payment schedule, but I would *certainly* not expect it after 18 months. In
the case of a development tool, with the importance of supporting
technology, I would expect new releases every 18 months and would be
concerned if I did not see new releases coming out from the vendor."

It really just depends on what you are developing.. with most of the major
businesses in the world still heavily relying on 10+ year old technology
this just doesn't stack up. Advancement for the pure sake of it ony helps
the OS providers and programming vendors like E... releasing new cool stuff
every 18 months when the old stuff is not sufficient does not help the
paying customer.. We have customers still relying on DOS software they have
been using for 20 years.. still works, still BUG FREE and yes we stand
behind our product. these releases of new technology are not improving their
business at all.. what improves their business is the fact that we provided
a software package that did the job reliably and still does. Our ability to
provide a reliable product is based on our compilers etc also being bug free
and reliable..


a 3 Month Policy, or whatever agreed.. thats really up to each customer and
provider and also probably depends on the nature of a product. Let me ask
this.. do you think to programmers writing the software for 747's and
rockets provide a 3 month warranty on peoples lives? no.. I'm sure they
aspire to more than that because they know that their laziness or accident
will cause lives.. Just like an Engineer, or Architect knows that mistakes
will cost lives.. IMHO there are NO PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS.. its
not a profession yet.. its just a thing we all do for money. Every
professional trade, be it Doctor, engineer, etc all share a simple thing
called responsibility and accountability..

I am not targeting this at anyone, or even Embacardo.. I dont have a problem
with the pricing of Pro At all, and if I ever upgrade.. $1000 here or there
means nothing to me for the value it provides.. but at whatever price they
set, they should make sure that it works for its intention.. to claim that
at the time of release it is "Fit for no particular purpose" is crap, and a
very singular reason to make me want to quit delphi in the future.. the
purpose is to allow me to make application Rapidly and successfully RAD.. if
there are issues that slow me down.. its failing.




On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Richard Vowles <
richard at developers-inc.co.nz> wrote:

> Comparing software development to plumbing is a road to madness, surely?
> Thats almost certainly like saying software development is an engineering
> discipline, which it has clearly been disproved from being.
>
> Delphi consists, last I heard, of 26000 different source files - to expect
> that entire tree to be "bug free" is questionable in the least. Besides, a
> bug is defined as being something that does not meet the requirements. Given
> Delphi's "set of requirements" for shipping is determined at the point of
> shipping, technically it meets those requirements and thus has no bugs. All
> subsequent "patches" are, technically, not bug fixes but requirements
> changes. As the quality of requirements set by Borland were clearly much
> lower than people would generally consider acceptable (for Delphi 2005, and
> most certainly for Delphi 8), that is really a mismatch in requirements
> expectations. Remember, we are talking *Borland* here, not *Embarcadero*.
> Embarcadero, I think, has a pretty good track record, and a much higher bar.
> But even E have "feature defects" they consider acceptable when shipping.
> Everyone does.
>
> As an interesting aside, Support and Maintenance on Delphi (and all IDEs
> from Borland and I am assuming from E but I haven't closely looked at the
> T's&C's) *specifically exclude* bug fixes. Included are new versions and
> workarounds (if possible). S&M is also only provided two versions earlier
> from the current version (from memory) meaning even D2006 is excluded from
> the attempts for workarounds.
>
> I'm sorry, but I would not commit to writing an application and then fixing
> any things its users considered bugs gratis for eternity. I would consider
> it reasonable for 3 months as long as it was agreed to in the original
> payment schedule, but I would *certainly* not expect it after 18 months. In
> the case of a development tool, with the importance of supporting
> technology, I would expect new releases every 18 months and would be
> concerned if I did not see new releases coming out from the vendor.
>
> Richard
>
> 2009/9/19 Kyley Harris <kyleyharris at gmail.com>
>
>> Paul. I agree 100% a professional software company, E, should not charge
>> 1cent to license holders for genuine bug fixes and should package free
>> releases independantly of feature releases until they are fixed. Otherwise
>> they are not professional anything
>>
>> When I pay my plumber to fix a leak. I don't expect to have to pay him to
>> fix the new secondary leaks he caused by being a bad plumber
>>
>
> --
> ---
> Richard Vowles, Technical Advisor
> Developers Inc Ltd
> web. http://www.developers-inc.co.nz
> ph. +64-9-3600231, mob. +64-275-467747, fax. +64-9-3600384
> skype. rvowles, LinkedIn, Twitter
>
>
>
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-- 
Kyley Harris
Harris Software
+64-21-671-821
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