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Why Buggy Software Gets Shipped
astonishedelf writes to mention an article in the Guardian about the hard reality of why buggy code is sold on retail shelves. From the article: "The world's six billion people can be divided into two groups: group one, who know why every good software company ships products with known bugs; and group two, who don't. Those in group 1 tend to forget what life was like before our youthful optimism was spoiled by reality. Sometimes we encounter a person in group two, a new hire on the team or a customer, who is shocked that any software company would ship a product before every last bug is fixed. Every time Microsoft releases a version of Windows, stories are written about how the open bug count is a five-digit number. People in group two find that interesting. But if you are a software developer, you need to get into group one, where I am."
Software will stop being buggy as soon as people stop putting up with it.
If people actually stopped buying Windows because it sucks, you can bet your sweet darned bippie Microsoft would stop making it suck. As it is, honestly, why should they care? People keep using Windows. It makes no business sense for them to focus on quality if quality doesn't sell.
<flamebait>There is already a company that caters to the niche market that actually gives a rat's ass about consumer software quality. It's Apple -- and oh, look at how they just dominate the desktop computer market....</flamebait>