Windows 2000 Has 65,000+ Bugs

According to a story on ZDNET, Sm@rt Reseller got an internal MS memo that says Windows 2000 has 63,000 "defects" (if you read the article the number goes up to 65,000+ bugs), and that's the same Windows that will be out on Feb. 17! Is this what MS suggests putting on people's workstations and installing on production servers? What do you think?

Comments

Re:Not shocked

[Wanker]

Consider also RedHat, which has been around for a much shorter period of time. Their Bug reporting system reports a total of about 1640 new, reopened, and assigned bugs with 140 bugs new this week. If Redhat had the same user base as windows, their bug system would likely report similar numbers.

Time and experience with the new OS will be the true test of its stability. Just think of how the bug counts will grow once it's been released to the rampaging mobs!

65,000+, huh?

[kaphka]

And they claim there's no 16-bit code left in Win2000...

(Please don't moderate this if you're not a programmer. :-))

Oh, stop being so predictable

[TummyX]

If you were to add up the bugs in Linux that Microsoft would consider a bug (eg. would be in their count) I bet it would be the same, if not more.

These bugs aren't show stoppers, gee 65K ooh that is heaps, the damn thing won't even boot! Not.

These bugs are more like, on this system with X hardware when running along side with this hardware and when running X's software package called Y, windows 2000 will have a pixel out of place.

A majority of bugs in the 65K are very much like this. Bugs that cause potential problems with people not having HCL hardware. In fact I wouldn't even call most of them 'bugs' as such, since in the traditional sense they aren't - unless like Microsoft you want to make sure Windows 2000 works on the billions of hardware and software configurations out there.

And this statement "Is this what MS suggests putting on people's workstations and installing on production servers? What do you think?" is just so typical of what everyone's reaction around here would be. So blind, arrogant and ignorant, and very predictable. It's the type of knee jerk reaction which has made me so bitter with the Linux community over the past 3 years.
In many ways the Linux community acts too much like creationists/fundamentalists, no matter what science comes up with there's a knee jerk "oh we're not all monkeys you devil worshipping bastards" reaction.

Windows 2000 is by far the most stable and featured operating system Microsoft has written to date. I have NEVER seen a BSOD on any of our production machines at work.
I admit, on a 3 year old K6200 at home, I have seen around 6 BSOD during the beta testing phase, around the same amount of kernel panics I get on the machine as it seems, so i suspect my hardware is stuffed.

In the last few months of the beta, Microsoft was only paying attention BSOD (bug check) bug reports, even though other bug reports (like cosmetic or hardware compatabilty reports were still being sent in). This isn't incompetance, it's good management.
There's a point in a product's life cycle when it has to ship or never gets shipped. I mean, how many bugs has Redhat 6.1 had since it's releast, heck how many security problems has it had since it's released?
Microsoft at least plan these out, and while they're working on Windows 2000, they also have very good ideas of what the next service pack will do, and even what the next version of Windows 2000 will do. An example of one of these 'feature' bugs is load balancing COM+ services, this was a feature that never got finished in time, but has been moved into the service pack. It's by was by means essential, so it'll get updated later.

Microsoft has tried to do everything they can in Windows 2000, and it's no suprise that they'll be problems and things they don't get done, but that's software! Things that don't get done, get done later in a service pack (or option pack), and bug fixes are the same.
Despite these 65K bugs, Windows 2000 is still stable and will work for most people.

Anyway look at it the other way round, 75% of people _won't_ have compatability problems according to this article. That's not bad for an OS upgrade as HUGE as Windows 2000.

In fairness

[konstant]

In fairness, keep in mind that "defect", or even "bug" for that matter is a very broad term.

I myself am a QA tester, although not in the Windows group. I've entered many, many bugs that were Postponed or Won't Fixed that, honestly, probably didn't deserve to be fixed. Things like "such and such a static is too long for this control" or "we should notify the user if x, y, or z happens". Little niggly things in other words.

Keep in mind that a "bug" is anything a tester doesn't like, including personal design preferences. It isn't necessarily a flaw that would interfere with use of the product. If a bug is of that kind, then it's smart for a time-starved group to Postpone or Won't Fix the issue.

-matthew Priestley
mpriest@microsoft.com
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!