The "monetary gap between market leader and second place" is not the problem. In fact, that mitigates the problem.
Some of the worst software written comes in periods of insanely-paced competition. WordPerfect vs. Word, Netscape vs. IE (we'll ignore the question that's begged about Mozilla here). Anyone who remembers the "office suite" wars will remember that Microsoft, Corel/Novell, Borland, and YoMamaSuite were each pumping out verions left and right. And when there's that much competition, quality suffers. (Yes, on a relative scale, the best code wins because consumers have choice, blah blah blah, but on an absolute scale, software produced during heavy competition is more buggy).
This flies against most of the prevailing thought in this forum, but think about the decision from a management point of view. You're about to ship a product. Two pretty bad bugs are found at the last minute. You have to make a go-nogo decision. There are two potential worlds:
a) You have strong competition, who is also releasing a product with pretty much the same features, and they're planning to release at the same time as you. Early releases mean early press coverage, increased sales/penetration, etc. You have to guess whether it's better to hold off on shipping to fix the two bugs. b) You have little competition. In fact, your greatest competition is your software's previous version. You have to decide whether to hold off shipping to fix the two bugs.
Clearly, the manager in the second case chooses to fix the bugs, since stability is a selling point (albeit arguably a small one compared to features, for the average consumer). But a manager in the first case understands that unless his bugs are far worse than the competitions', shipping doesn't hurt (and in fact may be the most viable option). It's a classic case of Prisoners' Dilemma, and ironically the consumer gets screwed.
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Some of the worst software written comes in periods of insanely-paced competition. WordPerfect vs. Word, Netscape vs. IE (we'll ignore the question that's begged about Mozilla here). Anyone who remembers the "office suite" wars will remember that Microsoft, Corel/Novell, Borland, and YoMamaSuite were each pumping out verions left and right. And when there's that much competition, quality suffers. (Yes, on a relative scale, the best code wins because consumers have choice, blah blah blah, but on an absolute scale, software produced during heavy competition is more buggy).
This flies against most of the prevailing thought in this forum, but think about the decision from a management point of view. You're about to ship a product. Two pretty bad bugs are found at the last minute. You have to make a go-nogo decision. There are two potential worlds:
Clearly, the manager in the second case chooses to fix the bugs, since stability is a selling point (albeit arguably a small one compared to features, for the average consumer). But a manager in the first case understands that unless his bugs are far worse than the competitions', shipping doesn't hurt (and in fact may be the most viable option). It's a classic case of Prisoners' Dilemma, and ironically the consumer gets screwed.