Jim,

I just did!! Thanks for letting me know about that. I gave it top importance.

I may just somehow find the time to write this issue up in detail and send it to my congressman. I'm to the point that I believe there should be a law requiring all commercially available development tools to publish a bug list and bug fix list at every release. There are good reasons for this. A lot of important software systems are created with MS products, Sum products, Borland products, etc. Many of these systems directly affect our day-to-day safety, yet the developers are flying blind about what bugs make lurk in the development tool and create problems in their software. Knowing what bugs are out there would let us all create better, safer, more reliable software. And if everyone was required to do this, then the playing field would be level. Yes, they could snipe at each other, but they would realized that if they fired those shots, their competitors would fire right back. And the incentive would be to whittle down the list before release (and after release via service packs) instead of ignoring the bugs. This would be better for everyone. And developers with half a brain know that all their tools have bugs. As long as they aren't serious ones and as long as the companies work to quickly squash any serious ones found after release, then the developers and their customers will be happy. Given an idea like this, someone might say "oh, just more gov. regulation." Well, only the gov. can force this disclosure and level the playing field. Right now part of the reason this is not published is fear of giving the competition an advantage. But when everyone has to do it, then fair. Or someone might say "well, it would have to be expanded to all commercial software." Ok, maybe it's good for the SAPs and Oracles and PeopleSofts of the world to do the same thing. I would hesitate if it were pushed down to the custom software arena for developers like me, simply because I don't have the luxury of a large beta test group. I design, develop, test, and release and, quite frankly, the user beta tests as he uses the new modules, so it's a little different for the small shops. However, when it comes right down to it and that were included, I'd still support something like that because when I put a module into production all the bugs I know of are squashed. If you're honestly tracking and squashing the bugs, then you wouldn't have a problem with such a law. The penalty would come when people covered up bugs or otherwise didn't release the info. This is how sick of this I am. And one last thing. I think the big corporations of the world that are using MS software to develop their own systems could have a good lawsuit against MS because a lot of developer time is wasted simply because MS keeps this info veiled. But anylawsuit would probably only benefit the parties involved and so a law would be much better.

I'm sure this will generate a few responses. :~)

Russell


>Russell,
>
>May I take this opportunity to suggest that you cast your vote for UT Wish #1552.
>
>cheers
>