>>>What do you mean by "Looks like pure racket to me."? I don't recognize the expression.
>>
>>Racket: A dishonest business or practice, especially one that obtains money through fraud or extortion.
>>
>>Check http://www.realsoftware.com/support/developerprogram/. They charge from $250 to $500 for fixing their bugs in their product.
>
>Occasionally, a customer identifies a critical fix that does not meet this threshold in spite of being very important to their(my bolding) development efforts. It is for these customers that REAL Software offers "QuickFix" Priority Bug Fixes.
>
>By applying a QuickFix, a REALbasic customer can escalate a bug to top priority
>
>While I'm not sure what they mean by "critical" my impression is that it is critical only to the person reporting the bug. The way I read the program the fee is not for fixing the bug. The fee is for altering the priority and moving it to the top of the list. I don't think that is particularly outlandish. Something that affects very few people (to create a wierd example: date calculations which take into account Gregorian/Julian switch dates in Japan) should not take priority over scheduled improvements. By paying a fee you escalate the priority when it will not markedly affect the scheduled workload. (Perhaps to cover the over-time costs for fixing your problem and staying on schedule???)

Exactly! There have been times I *wish* we could have purchased a "priority adjustment" from Microsoft, but it was never an option.

Let's face it, every product has its harpies and detractors. Personally, I've yet to need a bug fix. (Disclaimer: I'm still at the fiddling around stage.) The author of that rant makes it seem like the product is bug-riddled and it just doesn't seem that way to me.