Trusting operating systems: vendor or university?

[chris at mimsy.UUCP]

>In article <55239 at sun.uucp> limes at sun.uucp (Greg Limes) writes
[pro vendor]:
>>If the operating system does not work properly, the company gets
>>bug reports and has to fix them

In article <1133 at mcgill-vision.UUCP> mouse at mcgill-vision.UUCP
(der Mouse) answers [pro university]:
>They do?  In my experience they generally ignore the bug reports. ...
>my notion of fixing a bug involves getting a fix to the person with
>the problem within a week.

(or at least a `hm, yes, that is a bug/ no, that is a feature | here
is a workaround | we have no idea how to fix it yet but we are working
on it', not dead silence: we can get dead silence from Berkeley for
free :-) )

>Not "in the next major release - and oh yes, that will cost you $2500[1]".

My own experience agrees with that of der Mouse, and applies to hardware
vendors as well as software (viz. Emulex).  Bug reports never get any
answer, though the bugs do sometimes get fixed.  Why should I pay for
this `service' when UCB CSRG operates more or less the same way?  And in
their case the silence is excusable (CSRG can be described as `five guys
weilding source code', and there is no one left to answer bug reports).
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris