[DUG] A change in upgrade policy coming from Embarcadero

[Jolyon Smith]

Even Microsoft think it's worth issuing fixes and indeed updates LONG after
18 months has passed.

 

Barely a day goes by without some Windows update or other shoehorning itself
into my XP system that Microsoft last got my money for almost 10 years ago.

 

And I can only hope that you were being funny in that passage about "low
quality requirements" not being bugs.

 

 

I cannot think of any other product for which I am asked to pay the sorts of
$$'s I am asked to pay for software that would come with a complete denial
of liability should it turn out to be partly or entirely unfit for purpose
or actually cause me loss or harm.

 

Actually, I can think of one product where the customers are treated with
disdain equal to that of the software industry .... and interestingly it's
the only other industry where the customer is referred to as a "user" by
their "dealer".

 

 

 

From: delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz] On
Behalf Of Richard Vowles
Sent: Saturday, 19 September 2009 15:49
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: Re: [DUG] A change in upgrade policy coming from Embarcadero

 

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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