Upgrade version and pricing [was] Re: Fix it before moving ahead

[Robert Brenstein]

>On 3/14/04 1:53 PM, Marian Petrides wrote:
>
>>Yes.  So long as customers are still using 9.1.1, there is an 
>>implicit obligation to fix bugs therein.  Once a product is 
>>purchased, the manufacturer has an implicit obligation to the 
>>purchaser to ensure that it functions as advertised.  Simply 
>>releasing a "new version" does not relieve one of the obligation to 
>>fix defects in the older version.
>
>So, by this logic, Apple should still be releasing bug fixes for OS 
>8.6? Lots of people still use it.
>
>--
>Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
>HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com

Well, I do not quite agree with the original poster, but your 
example, Jacque, is flawed and I am afraid it also misses the main 
point.

8.6 was a free update which fixed all then-known issues with 8.5.x 
releases. And 8.6 was and is very solid release. 8.5 was the only 
pay-for upgrade in that generation.

Similar situation was with 8.0 generation (8.0.1, 0.2, 0.3, then very 
stable 8.1) and 9.x generations (too many to list). Of course, once 
Apple moves to a new generation, there are no updates to older ones. 
That's reasonable. But they didn't move up until the generation was 
sufficiently fixed.

Microsoft is still releasing ocassional patches (albeit only security 
patches) for older Windows. I was updating a Windows 98 computer just 
a couple weeks ago. Within its fully-supported life, it got several 
free updates (service packs and individual component updates).

However, perhaps Metrowerks' Codewarrior is a better parallel since 
it is a sort of competing development environment. Metrowerks 
typically provides 3 bugfix releases (some only component upgrades) 
between paid upgrades. The current Studio 9 has already 2 out. 
Previous Studio 8 had 3 and Studio 7 had also 3.

And updates for Codewarrior (just like those of Mac OS or Windows) 
are available for download even for quite old versions (generations). 
If, for exmaple, you have a licence and original install of CW7 from 
1995, you can still download all 9 updates that were issued during 
its life-time should you have a sudden need to handle some legacy 
project.

The point is that major (as in paid-for) upgrades seem to come out 
only when the current version is considered stable and reasonably 
'fixed'. My reading on the gist of this and related threads is that 
users of Rev want RunRev to take care of bugs to a greater degree 
before rushing out a new feature upgrade. IMHO, this was okay with 
1.x generations when distinctions between bugs and features were 
often fuzzy, but the generation 2 is improved so much that those 
relaxed rules do not apply anymore and users are less willing to 
spend money on new upgrades knowing that majority of reported bugs 
were not fixed.

Robert Brenstein