Are Unfinished Products Now the Norm? 111
Paul asks: "Long ago when digital synthesizers first became commonly available, I recall a reviewer lamenting how he was getting more and more products to test whose software was unfinished and buggy and would require updates and fixes (this, before the internet allowed easy downloads, would have meant a journey to a specialist repair center). The review also commented how this common problem with computer software was spreading (this was before Windows 95 was out), and asked if it was going to become the norm. These days it seems ubiquitous, with PDAs, digital cameras, PVRs and all manner of complex goods needing after-market firmware fixes often simply to make them have the features promised in the adverts, let alone add enhancements. Are we seeing this spread beyond computers and computer-based products; jokes apart, will we be booting our cars up and installing flash updates every week to prevent computer viruses getting into the control systems? Can anyone comment on any recent purchases where they've been badly let down by missing features, or are still waiting for promised updates even whilst a new model is now on the shelves? How can we make the manufacturers take better responsibility? Apart from reading every review possible before making a purchase, what strategy do you have, or propose, for not being caught out?"
You're Looking at it the Wrong Way (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:You're Looking at it the Wrong Way (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course there is, even in the software industry. Consider the software that runs the Voyager probes. It was completed 100% and shipped.
The issue is not that it's impossible to finish something, it's that 80% done is where the money is. Companies that go overboard on quality either go out of business or get relegated to serving a niche market. Quality is expensive and customers will repeatedly drop their cash on unfinished products that pass the dog and pony show.
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Kinda brings new mean to "You get what you pay for."
Re: Voyager updated multiples times (Score:1, Insightful)
More info here: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/science/thirty.html [nasa.gov]
You may want to look at the Postfix mail server, it went a long time without errors or updates.
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Would you call the video game industry a niche market, then? Ironically, video games (!) have some of the highest quality around for consumer-oriented software products. The hard fact that manufactuers understand is: buggy games are simply not accepted by the market. Period. Nobody would download version 1.0.1 of any game.
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Would you call the video game industry a niche market, then? Ironically, video games (!) have some of the highest quality around for consumer-oriented software products. The hard fact that manufactuers understand is: buggy games are simply not accepted by the market. Period. Nobody would download version 1.0.1 of any game.
That's odd. Apparently the top five selling video game developers didn't get your memo. Perhaps you could please contact them again and let them know that we do not accept their shoddy quality in software?
P.S. Please make sure to send at least a dozen couriers to EA. Hopefully then one will get through.
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Re:You're Looking at it the Wong Way (Score:2)
I still have a dot matrix printer that functions flawlessly and is over 20 years old. That company no longer produces printers.
I think it happens to all industries when the profit margin is marginal. They'll dump it on the market and get new funding then fix the complaints as they happen.
Re:You're Looking at it the Wrong Way (Score:5, Interesting)
You raise a good point, but I don't think it covers the whole spectrum. The products listed in the summary have a unique ability to be changed after being sold. I mean that this is unlike the way things were a measly decade ago. When you purchased a VCR, for example, that was it. If it had a design flaw, that was it, you had to either deal with it or get a new one later on. Now, here's the funny thing: What constitutes a design flaw? The flashing 12:00 feature that has fueled the comedy industry for years? There are technical reasons for that. There's expense involved in curing it. Who would have thunk it would have been such a problem? It's easy for the customer to fix, right? Sure. But how would they know that until millions of people have put it through its paces? These days, they can put features in or alter existing ones once they get some hard data back from their customers. On paper, anyway, that's a bonus. "Ah, we didn't realize some people prefer to use the 24-hour format, welp, download this update, and you're good to go."
From where I sit, 'unfinished' is too strong of term. The fact is, when you're designing a product, you'd need a magic crystal ball that could see into the future to know what problems will be faced. It's one thing to have a hundred beta testers, it's another to have 10,000. There's always somebody that'll try to do something out of the bounds of what it was designed for. A trivial fix would suit their needs, but how does one go about that after the design's locked? There's no easy solution to that problem. At least now products have updatable firmware so new usability issues can be addressed.
Now, that's just usability I'm talking about. A new issue that has come up deals with internet usage. I have to be honest, I'm a little surprised anybody here really thinks a product can be internet-proofed. Take Quake3, for example. Here's a popular game that is/was played on the net by millions. Shouldn't be any different than, say, designing a LAN game where latency is less reliable. Right? Nope. Cheaters. Somebody sniffs the packets or watches what's going on in memory, and they find creative ways of getting an unfair advantage in the game. The potential here is a ruining of the experience for everybody. So, what does ID do? They make patches, address issues that came up, and kick the cheaters out. Okay. Unfortunately, they're a creative bunch. They can't get at the network code? No problem, we'll screw around with the video drivers and make the walls transparent. Cute. Call me a pessimist, but I don't think it's possible to lock down every scenario and still maintain a fun game for the masses. This problem has permeated to just about any internet-enabled device or application ever in existence.
Some companies take this to a stupid level. I agree with that. The simple fact is that a product still has to be well-designed out of the box. If you buy a digital camera but an expected function is broken and requires a firmware update, that's bad. That's VERY bad. However, that 80% bit you mention, you're spot on. We buy products to serve a purpose. It's not always the complete package we're worried about. Higher quality may yield a more versatile product, but I'd argue that it's hard to spend that extra $100 on the better camera if we don't see the value in it. As you've mentioned, there's only so much that can be done in a reasonable amount of time or under a budget.
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Hence my mantra, "The customer is always wrong". The problem I often lament is that customers drive poor quality products by voting with their wallets. Just as a sufficient number of people vote for continued Nigerian email scams, customers vote for continued poor quality products by supporting inept and cut-rate companies rather than running them out of business. Being an informed customer/consumer is too much work for many folks though,
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In software, finished == dead (Score:2)
Another category of "finished" software products are those tagged with the euphemisim "functionally stable" or "legacy", wich roughly translated means "go away and RTFM".
Abandoned, never complete (Score:2)
Even if work was allowed to continue, no product would ever be "complete".
The result is products which are "good enough for most of our customers".
You want Product X - well, you can have it:
a) never, or
b) bloody soon, but slightly less than perfect.
Which do you choose?
If people will buy it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If people will buy it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as people still buy your product, there's no incentive to actually fix it before it launches.
With respect to the car comment in the summary (though not exclusive), I've got one word:
Liability
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Sure, that would work, but it essentially taxes the people who are willing to pay substantially less to get mostly-working products.
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I see your word and raise you one:
Risk Management.
- RG>
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Which car company do you work for?
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Yup. And every click-though "agreement" absolves software vendors of any trace of it.
Software approaching the complexity of the organic (Score:5, Insightful)
So what if our software is constantly changing, and is thus "unfinished"? To be finished means it won't improve. Heck, the whole reason for the existence of open source is the "if it's broken, I can fix it" idea.
So, why do we need software to be "finished," anyway?
Re:Software approaching the complexity of the orga (Score:1)
I wholeheartedly agree w/r/t complex software. Further, if you look at organic artifacts, even something as simple as a knife, the tool is always changing. The knife gets duller, and you sharpen it (removing molecules), and so it is constantly changing.
I think a lot of people say "uh oh, when are cars going to start getting the BSOD?", but what they don't realize is that, as complicated mechanical entities, cars DO give the equivalent of a BSOD. The word "crash" has a real-life meaning, too, after all
Re:Software approaching the complexity of the orga (Score:4, Insightful)
Hypothetically, if your current 'perfect OS' software no longer has any development being done, when new storage devices or networking devices become available, that 'perfect OS' is no longer perfect. For this reason, all software will always be 'incomplete' in as much as the world around it changes at an ever increasing pace. Some software is outdated by the time that it is ready for launch as a beta product. For more on that, see the big software projects that some groups around the world have attempted, only to find that on launch it is not capable of dealing with recent changes in the world.
All software will always be no better than beta given that the above is true. This means that for businesses, good enough is as good as perfect as that is as close to perfect as it is likely to ever get.
Sure, there are cases where good enough really isn't; medical equipment, space travel equipment etc. but for the vast majority of software for consumers, beta grade is good enough and thus worth releasing.
Fortunately, some companies release beta software/apps and treat them as such by continuing to improve them before pronouncing the software is out of beta stage. When software is released as final product rather than beta, consumers get upset when they find out it's really only beta that they paid for.
But the point is, yes, software suffers from entropy and atrophy is relative terms.
Re:Software approaching the complexity of the orga (Score:2)
Re:Software approaching the complexity of the orga (Score:2)
Re:Software approaching the complexity of the orga (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Software approaching the complexity of the orga (Score:5, Insightful)
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> people that make and test the systems, but mostly with the people who
> hire/fire developers, designers and engineers.
No. It rests entirely with customers who buy cheap, heavily advertised crap, complain bitterly about how it doesn't work right, and then go right back and buy more cheap, heavily advertised crap from the same vendors.
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go right back and buy more cheap, heavily advertised crap from the same vendors
I don't think there are really "other vendors" to choose from. I think they've all gotten into the ship it before its ready mentality and the
Not much choice (Score:2)
I don't think many people fully recognize what an impact government had on the software industry and the internet through the 90s. It was taxpayer money that provided a significant percentage of the capital for the companies which went big (or went broke). It was taxpayer money that provided a signific
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The engineer's mantra (Score:2)
I can give you two out of three, which do you pick?
Re:Software approaching the complexity of the orga (Score:2)
I'm approaching 100 years old, but I've still got a very long way to go before I get there.
Because as a consumer, if I blow 300 bucks to buy a funky new PVR, I'd like it to at least record the programmes I ask it to, the way my VHS VCR did 20 years ago?
Because the time lost in business due to poor software products being inefficient costs a staggering amount of money compared to what we cou
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So what if our software is constantly changing, and is thus "unfinished"? To be finished means it won't improve.
I don't think the contention is that software should be perfect, and should never be changed. However, it would be nice if the software at least worked well when it was released. More and more software is being released in an almost perpetual "beta" state, even though users are paying for it. It seems to be more acceptable to release software with bugs in it, that hasn't been through a proper testing regime.
So, why do we need software to be "finished," anyway?
In this context, I would say it would mean that it isn't full of bugs. I think that's important.
What a question to ask here (Score:1, Flamebait)
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nunchucks fix it (Score:1)
A phillips DVD recorder (Score:5, Interesting)
Combine this disturbing trend with product reviews that are little more than a regurgitation of the back of the box. (Along with some weird DMCA rules about what can and can't be reviewed on a product esp. vis-a-vis security.) Now you have a situation where you can't even get real reviews of products, and no review is ever "not positive." It's just that some are more positive than others. So, here you are, trying to buy a $500 video camera so you can tape the birth of your fist child and you aren't even really sure that any of them work. On top of that you can't even trust the reviews you read on various sites. I agree with you, this is not a good thing.
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> regurgitation of the back of the box.
This is because only those who can be trusted to publish positive reviews get pre-release samples to review.
> Along with some weird DMCA rules about what can and can't be reviewed on a
> product esp. vis-a-vis security.
There are no such rules.
> Now you have a situation where you can't even get real reviews of products,
> and no review is ever "not positive." It's just that s
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What I do is buy consumer electronics from Fry's, which has a very liberal return policy. If a device doesn't work, I return it for store credit. When they ask why I returned it, I state that it just doesn't work and probably shouldn't be sold to the general public. I've used this technique for graphics cards, sound cards, and keyboards with malfunctioning drivers.
I also try to buy from stores that are a bit more selective about their merchandice.
Be a responsible consumer (Score:1, Insightful)
How can we make the manufacturers take better responsibility?
If it doesn't work right take it back. If a manufacturer continues to put out a shoddy product, don't buy their products in future.
This is incompatible with the idea that you must have the latest game, the latest gadget, the latest console, etc. How many people on Slashdot know about Sony's abusive behaviour and yet bought a PS3 anyway? How many people here know about Blizzard shutting down Free Software competition with phony copyright
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That's right... either buy a CD that can be played in most of the billions of CD players on the planet, or buy an iTunes song, with enough DRM that you have to actually burn the damn thing to a CD in order to make a usable copy. That's pretty smart! You've outwitted them, that's for sure!
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I don't have any actualy figures, but I'd estimate about two people. Although that's probably just a rounding error.
I've had that problem with routers... (Score:2)
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See, Blizzard does get a bit of credit for actually working with Cedega to fix World of Warcraft problems. None of the other companies you mentioned have done anything to improve their karma.
And this is what bothers me about the corporation, specifically the conglomerate. I like Bungie
It's not just software or even electronics (Score:2, Interesting)
The old thing is virtually indestructable, while modern equivalents are of lower quality, even though they come with those little bars to align your A5 or A4 paper size (Or US Letter).
Ours already broke off, so I just crease the paper in the middle and align on sight.
Henk
Note: That little compartment in a paper p
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I went t
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Acceptance of crappy quality, I'd say. Now, take video games (pre-Internet.) You ship a product on a ROM cartridge or a CD, that has no way of ever being updated except by shipping the customer a new media
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How much did it cost, in current dollars? How many of those do you think you could sell at that price? Would you buy one at that price?
Be sure the upgrade path is open (Score:2)
Shameless self-plug aside, this is happenng even with firmware we'd thought was following a different development model, like that in modern fighter jets [slashdot.org]. And th
I review consumer electronic devices (Score:5, Interesting)
Sigh...
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There's nothing wrong with unfinished products (Score:2)
The easy answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't buy new products. Seriously, if it is worth buying it will still be on the shelf in six months. Even then I wouldn't buy it until I had read a few *user* reviews, immediately disregarding the top 10%. Check out some forums. Unofficial forums that is, publishers are notorious for nuking negative comments. I do not trust professional reviews. Ever. Even for existing software things can be pretty sketchy for a while. Consider how often Apple manages to botch iTunes, and that's their billion dollar baby. I know it's not what you wanted to hear, but you have to do your due diligence and be patient.
Frankly I don't see this problem going away until it is legislated away. If the bills concerning paid advertisements (i.e. the Sony PSP blog et.al.) have any teeth and clear consumer friendly rules, then reviews might have some value again. Not a lot, but some. Beyond that, liability is the only thing that's going to reign publishers in.
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Not just products but everything else (Score:2, Funny)
My first CS-teacher said (Score:2)
Finished software is outdated.
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But it works.
p990i (Score:2)
There's a firmware fix for it from sony ericsson, but orange have installed branded firmware so I cant upgrade to fix the bugs. Any suggestions?
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1. Contact Orange, tell them to fix it or your giving them the phone back.
2. Upgrade the Firmware yourself, and wipe all the Orange stuff off.
3. Keep taking it from Orange and keep paying them money for a crappy product.
Oh thats right (Score:1)
What I see is in this world who ever gets their product out first is the winner. Thats why public betas are
Yes. My car's (Score:2)
It's really gotten out of hand. I just bought a new 2007 Jeep Wrangler. This is a major redesign of the old Wrangler line, and, for the first time, includes not only ordinary ABS, but active stability control in both yaw and roll, with rate gyros and computers.
Yesterday, I received a recall notice:
DamlierChrysler Safety Recall F50 - Reprogram ABS Control Module
"The software programmed into the ABS control module on your vehicle may cause the rear brakes to lock up during certain braking condition
There is a simple solution (Score:2)
This isn't a new problem. (Score:1)
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Think Windows 1.0, 2.0x, and 2.1 while you're at it.
Ask Harley Davidson owners (Score:3, Insightful)
Around 1970 the quality of the bikes was so piss poor that factory new machines would often simply not work without extensive work by their new proud owner. So did the japanese with their fastly superior quality bury HD as it deserved too?
Hell no.
But bikes are an odd product. They are bought by 'fans' not just fans of a brand but fans of a the idea of bikes themselves. Having to spend hours working on your brand new bike to get it work is not actually a minus to a HD owner. A nephew of mine is a HD nut and once he finished a bike he loves riding it, on the look out for a new wreck, sorry, rare find to work on.
Most tech goes through this face. Long before polaroid made photographs a snap you had a large group of photographers making photos despite the hassle involved. It wasn't always that cars were black boxes that just start always when you turn the ignition and you never ever look under the hood. Early car drivers had to be their own mechanics. No, that is not right, that sounds like they objected to it. For early car drivers, it was part of the fun.
It ain't just tech, ever had a sister who LOVED horses? They actually enjoy taking care of them, shoveling shit and hauling hay.
Computers are just the same, early adaptors don't mind the nitty gritty, for them it is part of it. As my nephew likes scraping rush, my sister loves shoveling shit, I love messing with obscure setting and compiling my own kernels. Take those "messy" bits away and you ruin the whole experience.
The problem is when the "normal" people get involved. When a tech moves from the early adoptors to the mainstream. When it is no longer a "hobby" but becomes a necessity.
There is a reason we no longer use horses for transportation. There is a reason why no courier service uses HD bikes and there is a reason why MS tries to hide all the settings from the user.
The problem is that in a very real sense some tech moves into the mainstream before it is ready and/or the mainstream audience has the wrong idea about the tech.
If you owned a horse back when it was a mainstream form of transportation you had better accept that the horse had to be properly maintained, the movie idea of driving it hard across the desert into the town, jumping off and heading into the saloon just ain't "real". It requirs rubbing down, watering, feeding. They don't show that on tv.
They don't show you having to exchange the oil of your car, check its tires, replace the lights either.
The computers on tv? They have voice commands, can log onto any service automatically and always have the right file just a keypress away.
Reality is that computers just haven't reached a level of ease that suits the mainstream audience who just wants their product to run with zero maintenance. Is this wrong? Well, could you blame ford for not making its earliest cars as easy to operate as todays cars? Offcourse not. Tech has to develop. It has developped, compared to even the early home computers modern machines are a doddle to administrate.
You need to be your own "admin" of your system, know how it works, why things happen and how you can deal with them. Sure it would be nice if the system was advanced enough to just deal with it but that ain't the case. Yet.
Neither does your car, just ask your local mechanic how often they got to fix cars after their owner put in the wrong fuel. Why doesn't your car warn you before you put in the wrong nozzle? Because the tech ain't ready for it yet. One day it will, just as your car nowadays warns you when the oil is out (the oil light was once an innovation).
Same as your PC will one day warn you accuratly when you are about to download some dangerous software (No I am not talking about UAC or similar crap, that is closer to a sticker on your windscreen telling you to check the oil).
BUT not yet.
Early games required a lot more tweaking then they do nowadays. Believe it or not, once TV's didn't come with an AV button and you had to tune in you
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That's because it's easier to do on film without shoving a bunch of mundane user interface stuff into the story line. Just like movie characters don't use the bathroom unless it's useful to the plot and stuff like that.
"Neither does your car, just ask your local mechanic how often they got to fix cars after their owner put in the wrong fuel. Why doesn't your car warn y
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Re:Ask Harley Davidson owners - AMF (Score:2)
Harley Davidsons are a joke motorcycle (Score:2)
Hell no.
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recent example Linksys WRT54g router (Score:2)
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Release early, release often (Score:1)
Things can always be improved and tweaked, but while that code is unreleased, users are living with previous versions which may lack other features a new version brings. This is why lists of known issues are maintained. That list of caveats to let the users decide.
Also, at some point you just have to get that sucker out there for people to start using. Mac OS X 10.0 comes to mind.
Just take it back and get a refund (Score:4, Insightful)
That really is the best stratergy. If companies get too many returns, they will realise that their products are not up to scratch and either go out of business or fix them.
BTW, don't be fooled by retailers who claim you can't return things once the packaging is opened. The law appilies to everything, even software and things sold in those stupid "blister" packs you have to destroy to open. Just because the manufacturer made it impossible to find the defect without opening the product doesn't mean you can't return it. Even cars, which loose thousands of pounds in value when you drive them away from the dealers fall under the same law.
Jokes aside... (Score:2)
It's no joke [flightglobal.com].
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Observe EA Games (Score:1)
EA only seem to release bugfixes when patches are coming out to support paid "booster packs". Battlefield 2 is a prime example of EA's continued disregard for their customers. Every time I see their intro movie I groan, because I know the game is going to have been rushed out the door.
Contrast this with Starcraft - those chaps seem to be still releasing patches (I think the last one was within the last 2 years - not bad for 1998 game!). Valve keeps
Console games... (Score:2)
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I can only assume you consider OSS to be in the what you pay for is what you get category, a zero sum gane of zero. And interestingly after paying and getting nothing, a lot of people would rather willingly commit a criminal act and pirate the supposedly useless commercial offerings than continue to use OSS because it fits their needs better.
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You release unfinished products not out of laziness or incompetence, but because that way others can work on them too.
You're seeing the development process, which is normally hidden from you, in action. Is it any surprise that the unfinished software isn't all that you'd hoped for?
"Release" means a different thing in the commercial world than in the open-source world.
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No, you are seeing the development process never end. Just try and count the number of projects, even highly popular projects, that are still stuck in pre-1.0 state because the developers can not be bothered to set a specific goal and work to polish the product up for release, but instead just want to do the fun work of adding new things forever.
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No, you are seeing the development process never end. Just try and count the number of projects, even highly popular projects, that are still stuck in pre-1.0 state because the developers can not be bothered to set a specific goal and work to polish the product up for release, but instead just want to do the fun work of adding new things forever.
Gee, volunteers mostly only do the things that are fun? I'm shocked!
If you're unhappy with the software, then pay someone to adapt it to your needs. If lots of people are unhappy with the software, then they can pool their resources to pay someone to adapt it to their needs. At least that's feasible with free software.
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No, this is obviously not shocking. However, claiming this is a better development model than that for propietary software is definitely stretching it just a bit.
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Arguing about "proprietary software" as a development model is nonsensical. I think you're confusing commercial ("cathedral") vs. volunteer ("bazaar") development models, and free vs. proprietary licensing.
Lots of free software is developed by volunteers, and as a result, lots of free software is "unfinished". If you're going to use statistical models to show that free software licensing has an impact on product quality, you first need to adjust for that fact. Drawing conclusions about licensing schem
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