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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."
Careless mistakes and security holes? What about MS taking 200+ days to patch a critical security hole? What about bugs/security holes due to bad management styles/lazy programming or a combination of the two?
Sure, bugs / security things will happen... but how many are too many? And when is an acceptable time frame to fix those, and fix those that pose major security risks?
This guy gets it, and the others responding to this thread do not. There is no reason to ship with known bugs, shipping with known bugs doesn't mean you have good testing, it means you have lousy developers and poor quality.
The fact that consumers tolerate it means you have a good business model, or a good marketing team. But your still shipping crap and your developers (and managers and quality) still suck.