#Silent Revisions
11 messages in this thread
I didn't know that at least one company (one of the biggies) uses "silent
revisions". They discover bugs, fix 'em, but don't tell anyone. Instead they
might change the copyright notice ever so slightly (for example), so that they
know which version is the newest.
This does not, on the surface, seem like fair play. Is it a common practice?
—Mike
Mike,
This definitely is a bad practice. I think, that whenever we come across such
practices, the name of the company and the product should be published as
widely as possible. Who is the culprit ?
Joergen
Joergen, I agree, but I'd like to here they're side of the story before I
mention their name. —Mike P.S. here=hear.
Mike; I agree wholeheartedly! Of course if your're the "un-named company", you
can save the money it would take to notify the user-base of the revision.,
especially if they just sent in $20 for a backup of the buggy one! Generally,
if publishers, make changes along the way, which most of us do, we at least
offer some sort of up-grade path to original users. The "un-named firm" is the
only one I'm aware of that does it the way you described. <–Stan
What's not fair about it? Would it be better for the company
to continue shipping something that has a known bug when a fix
is available? It costs a lot of money to do an update, and if a
company were to try to release updates every month or so it would
be chaos and very costly.
It does not cost a lot of money to print an adhesive label with a new version
no and a one page sheet describing the bug fixes.
Joergen
Beg to differ with you, but when you sell software for under $50 it is a major
expense to send out an update notice. If you're very small, it's less of an
inconvenience to do so, because it only involves a few hundred mailings; maybe
a day's worth of work or two. Or else you pay somebody else to do it. Then
you have to deal with the returns. Then you have to support multiple versions
on the market, more phone calls, more explanations. Lots more time.
If you release multiple versions, you have to support multiple versions,
regardless of telling or not. I do not require you to send out update notices
to everybody, but when the dealer gets the updated version, he will be able to
support the customers and explain why feature X works on Bob's version, but not
on Joe's version. Don't you think this might save the company some phone calls
? Also I should think, that a large company would be better prepared to handle
this than a small company, because it has more people, which could do this and
a higher overall profit rate because of larger volume.
Joergen
I think it's even more wishful thinking with a larger company. For them, a
difference of $.25 profit on a product can mean thousands or hundreds of
thousands of dollars. A larger company is more likely to orchestrate a second
release, but if a bug is found in mid-production, they're not likely to notify
anybody of an "update", but they are likely to make the next production run of
10,000 or so units contain the new version. Then if a customer calls
complaining about the specific problem, they'll get an update.
Charlie, what they seem to do is that if a customer complains about a bug that
they've updated, they don't tell the person. Instead, they say that it must be
a defective copy, and to send it in for replacement, WITH A REPLACEMENT FEE if
not in warranty. —Mike
Charging or not charging for updates is a promotional thing. They cost a lot to
ship, and most companies try to make a profit on them. Not particularly nice
to be devious about it, though.