paying for bug fixes (was Re: [ANN] Installer Maker Plugin 1.7.8)

[Tim Jones]

On May 4, 2012, at 1:40 PM, Dar Scott wrote:

> Thank you, Tim.  This is very clear and attractive.
> 
> I do have a question.  If Product X is on version 8.8 and a customer is using 1.0.5 (released 11 years ago, just before 2.0.0) and finds a bug, do you fix the bug?  That is, do you create version 1.0.6? 

That falls WAAAAAY outside of expected support.  However, we do cover that in our playbook - in that case, we offer the user a price-adjusted upgrade path - less than full price, but more than the 50% normal upgrade - to the current version or offer to fix the problem in 1.0.5 under contract for a specified NRE rate.

> Another.  If Product Y is on 1.5.8 which has not gotten bug reports for a couple months and you create a new and better version with major feature changes and plan to release it as 2.0.0.  However, some bug reports come in for 1.5.8 and the bug does not occur in 2.0.0.  What do you do?  Do you release the new major release as 1.6.0 (update) or do you release it as 2.0.0 (upgrade) and then work on 1.5.8 ignoring complaints about 2.0.0 bugs until 1.5.8 is out, or do you hold off on releasing 2.0.0 until 1.5.8 is out?

In that case, we release version 2.0.0 and port the fix back to 1.5.7.  In fact, we're putting out version 3.0.0 of our BRU Producer's Edition product on the 15th of May, but we've back ported 3 fixes to the 2.3.4 version and are releasing an update to 2.3.5 today to provide the fixes to the non-support customers.

> is a change in a minor digit an upgrade or an update?

We treat it as an update.

Tim