Re: OCaml's Cathedral & Bazaar (was Re: [Caml-list] Completeness of "Unix" run-time library)

[skaller <skaller@users.sourceforge.net>]

On Fri, 2004-03-19 at 12:30, Jacques Garrigue wrote:
> From: Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org>
> > On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 03:10:20PM -0500, John Carr wrote:
> > > Suppose we find a bug in ocaml that impacts our product.
> > > Whose job is it to fix the bug?  Neither "a network of
> > > hackers" nor "some academic researchers in France, if they
> > > have the time" is an acceptable answer.
> 
> Well, I understand this is hard to explain to companies.
> Yet I believe that we have a good record for correcting bugs.
> It is not because we are academic researchers that we don't take
> seriously our responsibilities.
> (Microsoft is certainly not faster, and does not offer more guarantees.)

Falls over laughing... no comparison! I found 3 bugs in 
Ocaml compiler. The first one took a while to convince the team
there really was a bug .. several versions were unusable.
But once convinced, the fix in one day. Two other bugs
fixed in several hours.

Experience with MS: a complex application using Borland C++
had to be converted to MS due to some moron accountant
manager idiot. MSVC++ couldn't handle it due to both serious
bugs and size limitations.

Yes, the company was VERY BIG player with MS contract support
and ISO quality assurance procedures (falls over laughing again)
yes the MS representative was on site quickly enough to
examine the problem.

What did he do? Report the bug (which we already knew) to the
MSVC++ compiler team in Redmond. That's it. Even the representative
got no feedback from them, let alone a fix. AFAIK the problem
was never fixed .. I didn't hang around long enough to find out
the eventual outcome .. it seems doubtful the accountant got
fired though :D

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller@users.sf.net
voice: 061-2-9660-0850, 
snail: PO BOX 401 Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
Checkout the Felix programming language http://felix.sf.net



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