David W. Fenton wrote:
On 17 Oct 2009 at 6:44, dhbailey wrote:
In effect,
we end-users have become the final beta-testers, for which
privilege we pay full retail upgrade prices.
Only those who choose to buy the initial release end up as de facto
beta testers. Others wait to buy a new version until after the patch
is released.
And then they become beta-testers for the remaining bugs
which might get fixed in the next release. And they still
pay for the privilege. All software users fall into that
category. It's just that many software manufacturers will
continue to release bug fixes for older versions while
MakeMusic chooses not to.
MakeMusic
waits a bit to see which of the known bugs raise the largest
outrage and complaints and then it fixes those and chooses
to let the rest of the known bugs lie until it can get
around to them.
You do not know this to be the case. Stating it as fact is really a
dishonest thing to do.
And you probably don't even believe that this is the case.
Yes, I do believe it to be the case. Tech support personnel
have told me it is the case, although in a general "this is
how we triage bug reports" manner and not specifically
related to how they decide which bugs from the initial
release of a new version will be fixed in the update patch.
Can you prove that what I said isn't true?
MakeMusic itself has said through its tech support replies
that it compiles lists of reported bugs and then decides on
which ones to fix based on several factors, among them being
the number of complaints. That's a fact. Other factors
which enter into the decision, as reported by tech support
people, are the difficulty or ease of making the fix, along
with what other new bugs such a fix might create. But that
has been reported both to me by tech support people when I
have asked when a fix might be expected for a bug I was
complaining about.
Software is complicated and fixing bugs is difficult and fraught with
all sorts of risks and trade-offs. I've tried to explain this any
time the issue comes up. Unless you the people at MM are crooks
(which I don't think you believe), they are just doing the best they
can with limited resources. The only software that lacks bugs is
software that hasn't been released. Shipping is more important than
stamping out 100% of known bugs.
I know that about software and the included bugs. No, I
don't believe the people at MakeMusic are thieves, I just
believe they have a misguided business model which states
"ship the new version every year with whatever bugs can't be
fixed and get to them later."
Your later point about Sibelius and being bought by Avid is
a valid one, except that Sibelius never had an annual
"release it no matter what" philosophy even before being
acquired by Avid. Somehow they were able to pay their
developers with that model. That may have been one really
good reason why Avid looked to purchase Sibelius instead of
Finale, if it were looking to pick up a notation program.
But I haven't a clue what companies might want to take on that
investment given the big picture with Sibelius.
AKAI might be a potential purchaser since they do have a
foot in the software market. Sonar would be another great
possibility. Sony is another one -- despite what some
divisions of that corporation do software wise, they have
done a good job after buying Sound Forge about releasing new
versions which work well.
--
David H. Bailey
[email protected]
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