Comparing software development to plumbing is a road to madness, surely? Thats almost certainly like saying software development is an engineering discipline, which it has clearly been disproved from being.
Delphi consists, last I heard, of 26000 different source files - to expect that entire tree to be "bug free" is questionable in the least. Besides, a bug is defined as being something that does not meet the requirements. Given Delphi's "set of requirements" for shipping is determined at the point of shipping, technically it meets those requirements and thus has no bugs. All subsequent "patches" are, technically, not bug fixes but requirements changes. As the quality of requirements set by Borland were clearly much lower than people would generally consider acceptable (for Delphi 2005, and most certainly for Delphi 8), that is really a mismatch in requirements expectations. Remember, we are talking *Borland* here, not *Embarcadero*. Embarcadero, I think, has a pretty good track record, and a much higher bar. But even E have "feature defects" they consider acceptable when shipping. Everyone does. As an interesting aside, Support and Maintenance on Delphi (and all IDEs from Borland and I am assuming from E but I haven't closely looked at the T's&C's) *specifically exclude* bug fixes. Included are new versions and workarounds (if possible). S&M is also only provided two versions earlier from the current version (from memory) meaning even D2006 is excluded from the attempts for workarounds. I'm sorry, but I would not commit to writing an application and then fixing any things its users considered bugs gratis for eternity. I would consider it reasonable for 3 months as long as it was agreed to in the original payment schedule, but I would *certainly* not expect it after 18 months. In the case of a development tool, with the importance of supporting technology, I would expect new releases every 18 months and would be concerned if I did not see new releases coming out from the vendor. Richard 2009/9/19 Kyley Harris <kyleyhar...@gmail.com> > Paul. I agree 100% a professional software company, E, should not charge > 1cent to license holders for genuine bug fixes and should package free > releases independantly of feature releases until they are fixed. Otherwise > they are not professional anything > > When I pay my plumber to fix a leak. I don't expect to have to pay him to > fix the new secondary leaks he caused by being a bad plumber > -- --- Richard Vowles, Technical Advisor Developers Inc Ltd web. http://www.developers-inc.co.nz ph. +64-9-3600231, mob. +64-275-467747, fax. +64-9-3600384 skype. rvowles, LinkedIn, Twitter
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