I found a rather interesting portion of a column,  in an early (#25) issue
of Linux Gazette,  that goes a ways toward explaining why we have so much
crap software out there:

"The nature of the computer software industry practically guarantees
that the most widely used commercial products will have bugs [...].  This
is the result of a set of corporate priorities that don't match typical
customer priorities -- and is a byproduct of the selection process by which
most software is purchased."

"I could go on about this for many pages.  Since I worked in the
software industry for a long time -- I had a lot of time to observe  the
process first hand.  (Since I was doing tech support I also had an
abundance of free neural cycles as well).  Here's a few observations that
will help explain my conclusion:"

"o  Software companies sell features.  They only make money on product
sales and upgrades -- and the margins are much better on upgrades than in
initial sales (since many,  possibly most,  upgrades are direct revenues --
and no "cut" goes to the channel distributors and
retailers)."

"o  Most software marketing is directed to channel distributors, 
retailers,  and fortune 1000 corporate purchasing agents.  Most of it is
not directed to end users and home customers.  These intermediaries largely
determine the pricing and availability of most commercial software,  and
the advertising that goes to the end user.  The priorities of these
intermediaries are:  high sales,  low product return rate (RMAs).  The
purchasing agents at Merisel and Egghead don't do detailed requirements
analysis on behalf of their customers."

"o  Product returns are most tightly correlated with how long the
customer has had the product before becoming dissatisfied with it.  That is
why "ease of use" and "ease of installation" are so
important in commercial software.  If the vendors can keep the majority
failures from occurring for 60 to 90 days -- very few customers will return
the product even if the publisher's policies allow it."

"o   There is much more focus on corporate sales than on retail sales
for most shrinkwrapped software.  This is due to high rates of piracy among
home users and the obvious observation that every 'customer' contact costs
money (sales and technical support time).  So one successful sale at
TransAmerica costs much less than 10,000 individual sales to home users and
SOHO markets."

"o  Most corporate software users have little say and relatively
little interest in what software they use.  They are told what to do -- and
usually don't question that.  Corporate purchasing agents get plenty of
political pressure from managers and executives but usually neither the
purchasing agent nor the manager spends much time 'in the trenches' with
the software that's being used."

"o  Managers are far more worried about being 'wrong' than being
'right'.  An excellent product from an unknown source is considered a much
higher risk than a mediocre product that gets good press and comes from a
large,  well-known source."

"o  The computer industry press can't sell much copy by talking about
'old' products.  They also can't depend on any significant amount of
advertising unless they maintain close,  positive,  relationships with
their major advertisers.  Most of their advertisers are hardware and
software companies."

"o  Because the writers in most of these magazines are working with
new (usually pre-release or 'beta') software or versions they have no
opportunity to discover the bugs that take two or three months to show up
in typical use.  In addition most of these writers either don't use the
products they review exclusively,  or tend to rely on earlier versions for
their production and critical work.  Almost no one is a full-time
professional journalist in the computer industry -- and those that are in
this position are in a rather poor position to do in depth evaluation of
anything other than word processors."

"o  Despite these limitations -- which almost guarantee that we should
take software reviews with a large block of salt -- these reviews in major
magazines become the focal point of most discussion on the topic.  By the
time a given customer has purchased,  installed,  configured,  and learned
a given product it's usually too costly (emotionally and in time) to 'start
all over'."

"o  The fact that a large number of commercial packages store some or
all of 'their' data (not 'yours' -- but 'theirs') in proprietary formats
also increases the risks and costs associated with switching."

"o  Finally there is a strong possibility that the next product a
given customer tries to switch to will be as bad or worse."

"When you go through all of this -- even if you don't agree with half
of the observations -- it's easy to see why so many people live in quiet
desperation,  hating their most important software." 

"Sadly,  it takes *really* bad software to fail as a result of its
bugs.  dBase IV comes to mind.  It doesn't take much for really high
quality software to fail as a result of poor marketing (or the superior
marketing and industry dominance of competitors).  DESQview comes to
mind."

"By contrast almost all free software is chosen by end-users based on
recommendations from other end-users.  It is produced by people whose only
rewards are:  access to their own tools to solve their own problems,  the
satisfaction of having lots of users,  and some chance for fame and sincere
admiration.  They gain nothing by claiming more than they deliver (except
more e-mail with more support questions)."

"Luckily we,  Linux and free software users,  are blessed with
alternatives.  These systemic problems are what I think we are really
'free' of."

-- Excerpted from Linux Gazette,  Issue 25, "The Answer Guy" column.

---