Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

Text for this page is extracted from the RISKS archive: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/17.44.html> This is the raw interview transcript (from which the magazine article was transcribed in German) kindly provided by the interviewer, Dr. Jürgen Scriba. The introductory text at the top is from Klaus Brunnstein, as found in " rel="nofollow">http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/17.43.html>.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#5

Post by endtime » Sat, Jun 27, 2009, 6:07 PM UTC

Is there any software company out there that ships products on the scale of Windows and Office and always fixes all known bugs in its code before RTM? If you know a bug will only affect 0.1% of users 0.1% of the time, it doesn't do anything showstopping even then, and fixing it will delay your release, you'd probably decide not to fix it too.

Disclaimer: I am working at MS this summer. But I would have said the same thing months ago.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#6

Post by chaostheory » Sat, Jun 27, 2009, 6:09 PM UTC

wyday wrote: post #3

Is this actually real? I couldn't find anything on the Focus Magazine website.

Looks like people investigating this in 2006 hit a dead end too: http://msgboard.snopes.com/message/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_t...

No reply from either the magazine or Dr. Jürgen Scriba

Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#7

Post by Tichy » Sat, Jun 27, 2009, 6:21 PM UTC

He has a point though. I think if they said "you have to buy the next version to get the bug fixes", customers would be quite upset. Some companies do that, but really, these days I would expect to get bug fixes for free.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#8

Post by mcav » Sat, Jun 27, 2009, 6:37 PM UTC

endtime wrote: post #5

Is there any software company out there that ships products on the scale of Windows and Office and always fixes all known bugs in its code before RTM? If you know a bug will only affect 0.1% of users 0.1% of the time, it doesn't do anything showstopping even then, and fixing it will delay your release, you'd probably decide not to fix it too. Disclaimer: I am working at MS this summer. But I would have said the same…

Heck, if and when I find bugs that affect .1% of users .1% of the time, I'd put it at a lower priority than the release, even with a tiny project. Cost to benefit.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#9

Post by wyday » Sat, Jun 27, 2009, 6:42 PM UTC

bayareaguy wrote: post #4

wyday wrote: post #3

Is this actually real? I couldn't find anything on the Focus Magazine website.

At the bottom of the page it says: Text for this page is extracted from the RISKS archive: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/17.44.html&#62 ; This is the raw interview transcript (from which the magazine article was transcribed in German) kindly provided by the interviewer, Dr. Jürgen Scriba. The introductory text at the top is from Klaus Brunnstein, as found in " rel="nofollow">http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/17.43.html…

I saw that too. But the question still stands. Is this real?

Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#10

Post by gizmo » Sat, Jun 27, 2009, 6:46 PM UTC

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. Any nontrivial product has a bug database with hundreds of known bugs per module/component. Most are not worth fixing because regression testing is so expensive. And the expectation of end users is really low, people expect software to be lousy.

People even except phones to crash nowadays. In a Palm Pre review I read the other day they praised the Pre's stability: it "only" crashed 4 times during testing, and it was because "we were running a lot of apps at the same time".

Expectations matter.