On Tue, 5 Jun 2001 22:14:03 -0500, Marc Leger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
somehow managed to type:
>IE 6 is still beta. You can rant all you want once it's released. I doubt
>Microsoft will release 6 PREMATURELY like somebody. I doubt I will ever see
>the day when Billy Boy announces to the world, "We had to release 6.0.
>Don't blame me, it was our marketing department's idea. Sorry for all the
>systems we hosed."
Sorry, you've already seen it many times. The most apt example is Internet
Explorer 4.0. It was buggy as all hell. Installing it was a perfect recipe
to make your OS unstable, and often unrecoverable. But it was released
because Marketing needed to tie the browser to the Operating System as
soon as possible.
Or look at the first cut of Windows 95, the operating system you had to
reinstall every three months or face total meltdown. Or Windows 3.0. Or
DOS 6.0. At the time Windows 2000 was released, Microsoft were already
preparing the first fixpack.
Point-zero releases of commercial software products are _always_ the point
at which marketing steps in and says "we can't wait for you to fix it any
more, let's ship."[1] Many companies are now deliberately avoiding
point-zero version numbers, just because of the stigma attached to them.
Charles miller
[1] Funnily enough, the two most egregious offenders I could think of
are Microsoft and RedHat.
