|
October
18, 2002:
Defective Software
Interview
with Mark Minasi, author of The
Software Conspiracy
Mike
Carruthers:
As consumers, we have a very different standard when we buy software
for our computers than we have for any other product we buy.
Mark
Minasi:
We accept far more, in terms of defects with our software,
than we would with any other good. And there's really no good
reason for it.
Mark Minasi,
author of the book The
Software Conspiracy.
90% of
the bugs, the defects, that you come across from the things
that you buy were known the day they shipped the software. Which,
by the way, is fine. You can ship defective stuff, that's fine.
I'm just saying, "Tell us what those things are."
Why do software
companies ship defective software? Mark says because they can.
We as consumers tolerate it and a quote from Bill Gates would
confirm that.
Someone
asked Gates in an interview, "Why don't you guys focus
more on quality? Why don't you worry less about adding new features
and focus more on quality?" And Gates said, "That's
the stupidest idea I've ever heard. No one would buy a piece
of software just because of high quality. People will only buy
software if it has new features." Yet you turn around and
talk to people and ask, "Do you like the fact that your
software crashes and loses your data?" And they say, "Well,
no!" And you said, "Did you know you can demand better
software?" And they say, "Oh, no, I didn't know that."
Mark notes
that this has happened once before with the car business, when
the Japanese introduced better quality cars to America.
If we
were to lose that same mindshare-did you know that we own something
like 90% of the software market in the entire world? This is
something that we own more than we ever owned in the automobile
business, and we'll give it away if we don't make quality Job
#1.
At somethingyoushouldknow.net.
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's "Something You Should Know."
|
