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31
General Software Discussion / Re: Software Ethics
« on: December 30, 2007, 02:00 AM »
hi mikiem,

I'm not sure what kind of double standards we operate here.

we supply software to some of the largest companies in the world. when they buy, the order is in hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars.

one software deal requires that we supply:
- 24x7 hotline with 24 hours turn-around,
- bug-fixes within 24 hours or less.
- worldwide support. and overseas local support.
- software with super-rigerous testing, confirmed both by our QA staff and their (ie. that company's) staff.
- any enhancements or additions par gratis (at no extra charge).

the problem we face here is getting our suppliers to give something meaningful we can actually use.

in the course of two years, we dropped 70 (source-code, library) suppliers (nearly 95% of delphi market, 60% of MFC market) and financed our own library development.

looking back at the past, we wrote-off so much code due to quality control issues it's simply mind-boggling.

i don't know what incentives we can give to our (source-code) suppliers to produce meaningful code. throwing money at them don't work, motivating them to do better don't work.





32
General Software Discussion / Software Ethics
« on: December 20, 2007, 05:14 PM »
hi,
I'm raising a new thread about software ethics.

I'm raising a broad-based discussion question.

The vendors of several popular organizers uses the same wordprocessor library, same scheduler library -
and used in different fashion in their organizers.

One thing i noticed was the sheer amount of bugs those libraries had and yet, the wordprocessor library vendor, and the scheduler library vendor managed to get away totally blameless - their customer's customers (i.e., the software vendors) get the blame instead.

many of the issues reported (by the end-users of these organizers) were attributed to bugs and defects in the (library), and no fault of the (organizer-vendor).

for the record, many years ago, I confronted the word-processor library vendor and walked away, losing a few thousand dollars., and same with the scheduler vendor.

why did I walk away and lose all the money?

the EULA on the Word-Processing Library states that the Word-processor library is without warranty and that it was without fitness for any purpose. any claim in court would be thrown out, and those vendors would tell me repeatedly that I would not get back my money at all. my emails are often ignored.

nearly all EULA found on software now have the above clauses.

today, I look at the software market and shudder. unless things change, either by law-enforcement (in the form of IT malpractice lawsuits) or increasing professional status of the IT industry, three things will happen:

a) people who write software will be tempted to sell "hypeware", "false promises" and "software full of bugs" to recover costs as quickly as possible,

b) it will become more and more difficult to earn a living selling software.

c) there will be another IT "black hole" where investments don't match the revenue coming in.

Questions:
- An average software developer makes approx US$120,000 per year. How many copies of US$29.95 organizers do you have to sell to support a development team?

- Why is that nobody has taken "class action" lawsuit against certain vendors?

- Why do people resign themselves to posting on this forum to complain... why not file an "IT malpractice" lawsuit instead?

Maybe the first thing to do, is regulate IT the same as being lawyers and doctors. Doctors are regulated by medical council or medical supervisory board. Lawyers have bar associations or law societies.

The very sad thing about software market is as every year pass by, I see more and more software created with false and misleading advertising. RAD means Rapid Application Decline, and QA is no longer followed.

Perhaps the only way to force higher standards is to start writing laws, to force IT vendors to honor their claims, and force punitive damages when they don't.


33
General Software Discussion / Re: GemX - missing in action
« on: December 20, 2007, 05:24 AM »
You could argue that even if the components are the source of the problem it is the package developers fault for choosing such crappy components!
-Carol Haynes (December 20, 2007, 05:19 AM)

what if the developers themselves were fooled and did not know better?


34
General Software Discussion / Re: GemX - missing in action
« on: December 20, 2007, 05:09 AM »

one of the things we did was put our bug tracker public and anyone can see the status of what's going on.

35
General Software Discussion / Re: GemX - missing in action
« on: December 20, 2007, 05:03 AM »
hi,
while not pointing fingers at anyone -
this comes from my own experience.

from a developer's standpoint:
The first problems is that to make a good organizer, you need a good scheduling control, a good word-processor control and good database tool.

the first problems is trying to figure out which scheduling library is good enough to be used, and which ones to use. most of the schedulers in the market are [-- !! --] quality. there are only two good vendors in the Delphi market and two in the MFC/C++ market. if you buy something that's bad, you end up with angry customers or very limited scheduler features.

the second problem is a good word-processor library - most of the third-party word-processor libraries in the market are same as above that I mentioned.

the third problem is getting a good database library. ... (same as above).

now, imagine if you are the developer, you buy a [-- !! --] scheduler, [-- !! --] word-processor, [-- !! --] database, and try to develop an organizer... you invest hundreds of hours to develop a working product, you eventually fail.

i wonder why no finger pointing went out to the software library vendors. they appear to be blameless...

i looked at the GemX issue, and many of the issues found in their not due to their fault. I purchased the same libraries that GemX uses, and I never used them, due to "quality" issues :(

for example, the costs would be like investing approx US$15,000 to sell a product worth US$29.95 ..., how many US$29.95 products do you have to sell to recover your costs and make a profit? not an easy answer.


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