Craig,

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>>>That's basically what I meant, but I can clarify this. I'm all for getting bugs out of the prodcut, but remember that shipping is also a feature. I'm pretty sure that MS has a projected ship date for VFP8. If many bugs are reported, then some will not be fixed in order to make the ship date.
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>>Well I sure hope that KenL is quick to refute this because it is the antithesis of caring for your customer!!
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>I don't agree with you. Let's say that you have a major problem with your application due to a bug in VFP. It may turn out that the bug is easy for MS to fix and does so. However, a particular bug affects a very small percentage of users, but not you. What you're saying is that you'd rather wait for the product than get your bug fixed.

Yes, I would rather wait, and for a couple of reasons.
1) A "target date", regardless of "revenue stream" projections, is not sufficient reason to ship known defective product. In most businesses this will get you into court with heavy duty fines real quick.
2) I don't know that I won't be affected by thatbug tomorrow.
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>>Customers (well the genuine user non-promoter types) do NOT consider delivery to be a "feature" in any way, shape or form!! The vast vast VAST VAST majority of genuine users would by far far FAR FAR prefer to wait for a clean product than get buggy product. Deliberately shipping product with known bugs in it is simply NOT ACCEPTABLE!!! I'm not talking here of bugs that have been in the product previously and have proven difficult to track down, but rather newer bugs identified during beta TESTING.
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>You can NEVER prove that a particular application is 100% bug free, even on the new stuff.

Right, we've had that discussion before. And that's why I added a qualifier (...previously...difficult to track down...") in my statement.
But the fact that customers openly make a statement that shipping with bugs is acceptable to them has a huge corrosive effect that can only hurt the product! Soon the developers start counting on the fact that the product WILL ship with outstanding bugs. Then they start picking and choosing the bugs that they themselves wish to work on and those that they feel can stay in, possibly simply because of their personal disinterest in specific stuff.
You know, I can understand product management evaluating the situation carefully and at some point deciding to release anyway. But when customers are strongly felt to accept buggy product their level of "carefully" has a real chance of going way way down. Especially in these times.

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>>This is a particularly onerous concept (I truly cannot believe that it is actually practised at a place like MS) that has NO PLACE in the software business, and especially so since MS and the VFP Team has chosen to keep bug lists strictly to themselves!!! IF THEY TRULY OPERATE THAT WAY they could claim at least a smidge of respectability if they opened the kimono regarding bugs, but they haven't and there's no sign that this is about to change.
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>I don't think MS operates any differently than any other software company when it comes to bug reporting.

Sadly I think you are right, but with a twist - MS has set the standard that other companies are more than happy to follow because MS severely LOWERED IT.

Craig, we all have to get back to being CUSTOMERS. Customers are the king. "Good enough" is fine for freebies but has no place in real business. There might be some sense to it if I could set my own price for something, but since I can't there is no sense.

A small example of how sloppiness does affect business:
I was recently looking to buy an LCD monitor. In my local shop they had a 15" "Neovo" monitor that looked real sharp indeed. I asked the guy if there was a 17" model and if it did 1280x1024 resolution. He jumped on the web and quickly told me that they had a 17" but it only did 1024x786. So I went home without ordering one.
I decided to use the web myself, going to NEC, Samsung, Sony and a few others. I noticed that EVERY 17" or larger model did 1280x1024.
I went to the Neovo site, found the "contact us" and sent a note asking for verification. They told me it was an error that would be corrected!
Sad fact is, though, that I found questionble specifications on every site I visited, forcing me to go to shops to SEE the real thing. In these cases "good enough" for them cost them a sale and added more work to my schedule and severely cut down on my selection. I think we all really lost!