>>>>The list of problems was miles long yet, despite that (and I maintain BECAUSE of that) people continued to buy FP in droves and droves.
>...
>>No. . . I'm saying that developers appreciated being able to go to a single source to check whether the problem they were experiencing was a know issue, whether it was fixed in a patch release, or if there was a workaround.
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>Oh, I misunderstood. So what did "BECAUSE of that" mean?

I communicated the thought poorly. If a person had a choice between dBaseIV and FP, then upon hearing that FP had an open bug list they would buy FP. They also appreciated the fequent patches too.

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>>As for your own software, I'm quite sure that its users would appreciate knowing of problems in it too, so that they can avoid banging their collective heads against wall fruitlessly or so they can avoid specific functions until a reported fix is made available.
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>I'm pretty sure they'd have no idea what to do with expliot code and other details if I gave it to them. However, if someone did know how to shove the exploit code into a virus generator, those same customers would be pretty pissed. Thats where my conclusion comes from. My customers woudl more "appreciate" being out fishing instead of looking at the details of computer bug.

OK, but I'm talking about bugs here that may exist in your code. If a user is banging away but can't get what he expects he should get, he'll be pissed too if it's the result of a bug. But give him a place to go to learn what may not work quite as advertised at this time and he won't even give it a go in the first place. Or he'll check early, saving tons of aggrevation.

All in all, developers (users, because we developers are users of VFP) are far far ahead with a current bug list. We'll appreciate the supplier far more too for helping us out rather than putting up a deceptive wall of silence.