🚀 go-pugleaf

charlie@umnstat.stat.umn.edu (Charles Geyer) writes:

>I agree that legal liability for buggy software is a knotty problem, but
>that's not what's important.  Law suits never improve quality.

Well, I tnk that that is a matter of opinion. I think that many
plaintiffs' attorneys would strongly disagree with your statement.
(but of course, that is enlightened self interest at its max).

>It is fair to say that no computer company puts quality first, ahead of
>featurality.  Until they do, quality will remain abysmal.

>The issue is not whether they exercised "due care" or whether they found
>the last bug.  The issue is whether bug fixes for all serious bugs are
>provided as a matter of course, and by "serious" here I mean anything that
>affects the functionality of the software, and whether product is simply
>not shipped with known serious bugs.

Not the last bug, because as we all know, that is currently not feasable.
What is feasible is getting the major bugs out, and getting the bug count
down to a specified level before release. This is called (or part of)
quality control. Unfortunately, often marketing, and not quality control
has the last say on when software goes out the door. I have seen this
problem at company after company.

I think that your suggestion about not worrying about QC on the front
end, just on the back end is indicative of the American mindset. That
way of thinking about Quality is why I drive a Japanese vehicle
.
>Every time I say something like this on the net.  Industry people tell me
>that economic realities (according to conventional wisdom) dictate that
>deadlines come before quality.  He who ships first gets the customers.

And that is why they are wide open to lawsuits. Its a business decision.
As long as you stand to make more money selling defective software, 
than software that works properly, companies will continue to ship
before they get the bugs out. When enough software companies have lost
enough money through law suits, we will gesoftware that works properly
the first time. 

Just take a software engineering course. We know how to test for bugs,
how to do software QC. We just don't do it. Often the company that is
shipping the premature software has a QC section. Almost as often
that QC group is at some level preempted by marketing. But how does
it look when I ask for that QC data when I sue you for defective
software. This is what is called a "smoking gun" by attorneys.

Bruce E. Hayden
(303) 758-8400
bhayden@csn.org