NOISE: Bill Gates view of SW Bugs and new releases - some quotes

[Mark <mark@lochard.com.au>]

Here is some signature fodder.

>FOCUS - is a German magazine
>
>
>FOCUS: Every new release of a software which has less bugs than the older
>       one is also more complex and has more features...
>Gates: No, only if that is what'll sell!
>
>FOCUS: But...
>Gates: Only if that is what'll sell! We've never done a piece of software
>       unless we thought it would sell. That's why everything we do in 
>       software ... it's really amazing: We do it because we think that's 
>       what customers want. That's why we do what we do.
>
>FOCUS: But on the other hand - you would say: Okay, folks, if you don't
>       like these new features, stay with the old version, and keep the bugs?
>Gates: No! We have lots and lots of competitors. The new version - it's not
>       there to fix bugs. That's not the reason we come up with a new version.
>
>FOCUS: But there are bugs an any version which people would really like to
>       have fixed.
>Gates: No! There are no significant bugs in our released software that any
>       significant number of users want fixed.
>
>FOCUS: Oh, my God. I always get mad at my computer if MS Word swallows the
>       page numbers of a document which I printed a couple of times with page
>       numbers. If I complain to anybody they say "Well, upgrade from 
>       version 5.11 to 6.0".
>Gates: No! If you really think there's a bug you should report a bug. Maybe
>       that you're not using it properly. Have you ever considered that?
>
>FOCUS: Yeah, I did...
>Gates: It turns out Luddites don't know how to use software properly, so
>       you should look into that. - The reason we come up with new versions 
>       is not to fix bugs. It's absolutely not. It's the stupidest reason to 
>       buy a new version I ever heard. When we do a new version we put in lots
>       of new things that people are asking for. And so, in no sense, is 
>       stability a reason to move to a new version. It's never a reason.
>
>FOCUS: How come I keep being told by computer vendors "Well, we know about
>       this bug, wait till the next version is there, it'll be fixed"? I hear 
>       this all the time. How come? If you're telling me there are no 
>       significant bugs in software and there is no reason to do a new version?
>Gates: No. I'm saying: We don't do a new version to fix bugs. We don't. Not
>      enough people would buy it. You can take a hundred people using Microsoft
>      Word. Call them up and say "Would you buy a new version because of bugs?"
>      You won't get a single person to say they'd buy a new version because of
>      bugs. We'd never be able to sell a release on that basis.
>
>FOCUS: Probably you have other contacts to your software developers. But if
>       Mister Anybody, like me, calls up a store or a support line and says, 
>       "Hey listen, there's a bug" ... 90 percent of the time I get the answer
>       "Oh, well, yeah, that's not too bad, wait to the next version and it'll
>       be fixed". That's how the system works.
>
>Gates: Guess how much we spend on phone calls every year.
>FOCUS: Hm, a couple of million dollars?
>
>Gates: 500 million dollars a year. We take every one of these phone calls
>       and classify them. That's the input we use to do the next version. 
>       So it's like the worlds biggest feedback loop. People call in - we 
>       decide what to do on it. Do you want to know what percentage of those 
>       phonecalls relates to bugs in the software? Less than one percent.
>
>FOCUS: So people call in to say "Hey listen, I would love to have this and
>       that feature"?
>Gates: Actually, that's about five percent. Most of them call to get advice
>      on how to do a certain thing with the software. That's the primary thing.
>      We could have you sit and listen to these phone calls. There are millions
>      and millions of them. It really isn't statistically significant. Sit in
>      and listen to Win 95 calls, sit in and listen to Word calls, and wait, 
>      just wait for weeks and weeks for someone to call in and say "Oh, I 
>      found a bug in this thing".
>...
>
>FOCUS: So where does this comon feeling of frustration come from that
>       unites all the PC users? Everybody experiences it every day that these
>       things simply don't work like they should.
>Gates: Because it's cool. It's like, "Yeah, been there done that - oh,
>       yeah, I know that bug." - I can understand that phenomenon 
>       sociologically, not technically.