On 21 Dec 2005 at 18:17, Noel Stoutenburg wrote: > David W. Fenton wrote: > > >So, however true it may be of MM's employees, it doesn't in any way > >excuse them for bad mistakes like releasing FinMac 2006 with the > >horrid data loss bug. It goes without saying that they didn't > >*intend* to cause this problem, but they did it anyway, despite their > > best intentions. > > If it has ever been established that anyone at MM knew of the "data > loss bug prior" to release of the 2k6, I admit you you have a valid > arguement. . . .
That would only be true if you accept that they had a suitably run beta testing program, or proper control over the code check-in. If they had enough beta testers, then it suggests that someone changed something after the beta program was largely over that didn't get sufficiently tested before release in gold code. Either they had insufficient beta testing or they released code that didn't go through the full testing process. How do I know this? Because major bugs like this one cannot be missed in a properly run testing process. > . . . However, I've not seen anything which merely suggests, > much less proves, that MM knew of the data loss bug when they shipped > 2k6, and since, based upon the number reports to the list, compared > with the number of people who use MAC's, it seems that there were > configurations where it did not occur. It's unfortunate that the bug > was there, and that it was not caught; and I'll concede that the > testing protocols need to be examined, given these circumstances. But > if those who did the testing of the product in advance did not report > the bug, I don't see that it was a mistake to release the product. The development process at MM was obviously broken in some way for such a serious bug to make it into shipping code. It's one thing for an installer to have a problem (and that got through due to inadequate testing, too), it's entirely another for the data loss bug to have slipped through. When you're on too short a shipping schedule and have too few testers and programmers, this is precisely what happens. And good intentions don't have anything whatsoever to do with it -- it's all a matter of having the right process in place to prevent such things from happening. MakeMusic clearly did not have that process in place. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
