Trusting operating systems: vendor or university?

[der Mouse]

In article <55239 at sun.uucp>, limes at sun.uucp (Greg Limes) writes:
> In article <1128 at mcgill-vision.UUCP> der Mouse writes:
>>... I trust one written by a company out to make money even less.
> Funny, I would expect exactly the reverse.  If the operating system
> does not work properly, the company gets bug reports and has to fix
> them

They do?  In my experience they generally ignore the bug reports.  (My
experience is limited to DEC and Sun, so this may not be a
representative sample.)  And my notion of fixing a bug involves getting
a fix to the person with the problem within a week.  Not "in the next
major release - and oh yes, that will cost you $2500[1]".  (Of course,
I prefer getting source, so I can fix it myself that evening, instead
of getting a black-box fix five days later.  Source is another oven of
flames I will refrain from opening just now.)

Specifics of ignored reports?  With DEC, I reported a bug in patch (VMS
patch, even, not an Ultrix thing) via SPR.  I never heard back, clear
up to the time when we finally dumped VMS for good.  (I also reported
another bug, but that was my mistake, not a bug at all.  They did get
back to me on that one.)  With Sun, I sent in one bug report and never
heard a peep, though the bug went away with the next major version (or
rather, was replaced by a different bug).  I also sent in a dissection
of some code printed in some Sun periodical publication (the STB
maybe?) and was told, in effect, "we didn't say that code was worth
diddly-squat; get lost"[2].  Those are the ones I recall; there may
have been others.

> Thus is it in the best interests of the for-profit corporation to
> provide software that is as reliable and bug-free as possible.

I agree.  If only they would realize it.  (Or perhaps I should say, if
only they would pay attention to bugs that are bothering only a small
proportion of their clientele.)

					der Mouse

			uucp: mouse at mcgill-vision.uucp
			arpa: mouse at larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu

[1] Figure picked out of thin air.  I suspect it's low.
[2] Not in so many words.  Details via email on request.