🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Jul6.222325.13344@cs.umb.edu> betsys@ra.cs.umb.edu (Elizabeth Schwartz) writes:
>  You are right, and it gets even worse if you consider high-volume, low-cost
>software. Take something like dBase for the PC, or even MSDOS. Most users
>of these products don't NEED support, except for a small amount of training
>or installation assistance. WHere is the incentive for the manufacturer to
>continue to make these products easier to use, and where is the guarantee
>to the  customer that these products are extensively tested, if the only 
>money to be made is on support?
>  I don't mind debugging at home. But if I am buying something which I am
>going to use to keep my firm's financial records, or give demos to customers,
>I want to pay money to someone who will guarantee me that their product will
>perform as advertised, not someone who promisis to start hacking if it breaks!

Good luck finding that someone ! My experience, at least with one dBase clone
maker (and one with a generally good reputation, I might add) is that not only
they don't guarantee *anything*, they also don't start hacking when (your "if"
is somewhat overly optimistic) it breaks and you don't have any source. We
switched to a database system distributed with source (Not copylefted, but good
old-fashioned hoarding style :-) and were happy ever after.

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher                                      neeri@iis.ethz.ch
   "These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can 
    even aspire to crudeness." -- William Gibson, _Johnny Mnemonic_