Open Letter to Rev: Quality Is Job #1

[Judy Perry]

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.

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.

OTOH, I think we HAVE seen some really neat new things introduced into
Rev with many more promised on the horizon.  Media is nice for its
audience.  We've seen responsive educational pricing for the educational
community.  We've seen enhanced support materials.  We've seen enhanced
graphics handling.  We've got Malte's game dev stuff, the Reports stuff,
and a slew of geeky stuff that I'm afraid to even look at ;-)  We've seen
follow-up for the problems created by the file format change.  The lists
haven't yet been axed.

And, Richmond, you know, I can't obviously speak for Andre, but perhaps
there are a couple of reasons why he did't call you out by name:

(a) the issue is the issue, not the person;
(b) he was trying to be polite.

Both seem like good reasons to me, FWIW.

Judy
(wow... a flamefest I didn't start!)

On Fri, 20 Oct 2006, Richmond Mathewson wrote:

> Yo! Andre Garzia!
>
> I am tha "someone" - I don't know why people can't
> call a spade a spade - or for that matter call people
> by their real names - I am quite prepared to stand up
> and be counted for my comments; daft or not.
>
<snip>

> The reason, as I see it, for the new stack format, was
> a way to push users into upgrading - this is not a new
> phenomenon.
>
> Now - while Bill Marriott's message may be interpreted
> as a "flamefest" (and I would choose to interpret it
> another way) - mine was not a flamefest - I do believe
> it would behoove RR to slow down the pace of
> development - and demonstrate a more responsive
> attitude towards its dedicated user community (which,
> oddly enough, I count myself a member).