Open Letter to Rev: Quality Is Job #1

[Dave]

Hi,

You hit the nail on the head (for me anyway)!

On 21 Oct 2006, at 06:30, Judy Perry wrote:

> Well,
>
> I'd argue it a different way:
>
> If you're steathfully (is that a word??) going to switch away from an
> oft-vaunted policy of "free year of upgrades" for a license to a  
> "this is
> all you're gonna get" policy of annual subscription fees, you'd really
> better be continuously chugging out new versions to keep all the  
> various
> subscriptions at their varying points of the year going full steam,  
> or you
> can kiss your revenue stream buh-bye.

This is the problem with the new "policy". You buy version X, it has  
bugs. Version X+1 comes along and you have to pay to get the bugs  
fixed! Ok X+1 may have some super-duper new features in it, but you  
don't really care about them for the job you are doing, you just want  
the bugs fixed. Unless you can separate out Bug fixes from  
enhancements you are left with a buggy piece of software that you can  
never get fixed! Even paying (again) for the latest version does not  
guarantee that you will get the bugs fixed, and since it has a lot of  
new features in it, all of which potentially have bugs in them, the  
situation just gets worse and worse.

I have found that I can get by with 2.6.6  with a bunch of  
workarounds etc., and I am not going to buy or recommend a new  
version until problems that have been around since V2.4 (ish) are  
fixed, so the revenue stream shrinks..........................

> I personally have mixed feelings.
>
> Fortunately, I don't have to actually *produce* anything with  
> Revolution;
> any bugs that exist I can 'program' my way around in terms of  
> curriculum
> change(s).  However, if I did, I'd be leery about paying year after  
> year,
> wondering whether (as has been claimed, note that I'm not saying  
> it's so)
> pre-existing bugs of a year or more have actually gotten fixed.  I  
> guess I
> should be especially glad that I'm not a *nix user waiting for desired
> improvements/fixes.  It must be tough to look into a crystal ball  
> to try
> to discern whether some badly-needed bug fix/improvement will see  
> its way
> into the next release so as to make the pre-purchased update pack
> worthwhile.

I know that I recommend that one of my customers get RunRev, they  
were all for it, until they found out that:

1.  They would have to pay "extra" to have bugs fixed and
2.  Even if they did pay "extra" there was no guarantee that they  
would ever be fixed.

So, there's two licenses that RunRev didn't get.

The sad thing about it is that if they had just increased the price  
of the total package and offered a year's free updates, plus a  
separate stream for bug fixes as opposed to enhancements, they would  
have paid it.

Cheers
Dave