Re: The Borland Vision: Wrong?

From: Lauchlan M (LMackinnon_at_NOSPAMHotmail.com)
Date: 11/10/03 

Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 13:16:29 +1000

> should be fixed. What I am a little skeptical about and makes me wonder is
> why people keep hitting the same nail over and over and don't just change
> their strategies. The bugs are show stoppers? You don't feel like you're
> getting replies or patches in a timely manner (or at all)? Ok. Fine. What
> will, at the end of the day, resolve your problems? Complaining or change
> your strategy? If I were (i.e.) so committed to dbExpress and I found a
> certain driver wouldn't work right or good enough for my needs, I'd just
get
> a 3rd party one and move on with my life. That's no excuse for the bug
> themselves, but that is what resolves the main issue

Well, from the developer side I'm sure you have a good, pragmatic point.

I think however that what underlies these concerns is an attitude that I
also share, namely that vendors of a product should take some responsibility
for it and address bugs and issue SPs.

I was really a little shocked (in the surprise sense) by John Ks apparent
defence of Borland for not fixing bugs (in the thread 'QC in place to humour
developers?' ) along the lines of their QC/bug record is good because they
have fixed some bugs, and that Delphi developers should therefore just stop
and applaud Borland for that rather than complain that other bugs developers
are concerned about haven't been resolved/fixed. ie, developers who want
their bugs fixed are just being "negative" and a pain.

I think this is an odd attitude to quality control, which is why I was
surprised. I would have thought the normal thing would be to have a process
in place so that all bug reports are opened, assigned an appropriate status,
and when appropriate/possible fixed/resolved with a patch issued, and a have
a target of (some high percentage) of bugs being addressed and fixed within
(small relatively small frame of time, eg a month of receipt and listing it
as an issue to be resolved).

But maybe this attitude that vendors should fix their bugs is becoming
passe, like the idea that vendors should provide printed documentation and
like you say we just need to get on in the real world today.

I think the point someone else made about reputation is an important one.
Borland can't affors (IMO) to become branded as being flaky. Already,
dropping their C++Builder support, appearing inactive on Kylix etc can't
improve their image of reliability for people making future oriented
decisions.

Lauchlan M

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