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From: papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000's Shipping!
Message-ID: <25733@usc.edu>
Date: 6 Jul 90 03:28:16 GMT
References: <719.2691DC21@weyr.FIDONET.ORG> <13058@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1990Jul5.193053.30153@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
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Organization: Felsina Software, Los Angeles, CA
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In article <1990Jul5.193053.30153@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> es1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Ethan Solomita) writes:
>In article <13058@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax (Dave Haynie) writes:
>>As for 2.0 compatibility, the reason to keep 1.3 around is to give everyone
>>a chance to fix their bugs.  Both Amiga programmers, who'll fix any 2.0 bugs
>>they find, and applications programmers, who should fix their 1.3 bugs that
>>break under 2.0.  Once 2.0 is ROMed, there will be no need to support 1.3
>>anymore.  Good companies will have released bug fixes to their software where
>>necessary, and not-so-good companies will be telling you the kind of support
>>you'll get from them in the future.  
>
>	Most of the companies I've spoken to (including NewTek and
>Gold Disk) have stated that it is their policy to wait for 2.0 to be
>finished before working on bug fixes because they say they don't know
>if the bug is their fault or Workbench's fault. Gold Disk said that
>all the problems with gadgets were problems with Intuition and that it
>had nothing to do with them. If this attitude is prevalent we may have
>to wait until after September before we get knew versions.

IMHO, that's VERY dumb on the part of those companies.  Interestingly I
didn't meet any represenatative of such companies at DevCon.  Also, I can
attest to the fact that participating in the beta process is a two-way
street: you get to check what Commodore is working on and a chance to help
fix bugs, AND you also make sure that your software doesn't do anything
"not-by-the-books", which can show up in a new release like 2.0.  Commodore 
took out at some point some "compatibility fixes", which showed up problems 
in a number of products (including mine :-) Some of these fixes are back in
temporarily, but will be gone at a later release. Not participating in the
beta process, gives you NO leverage in situations like that.  Let me also
say that Commodore's 2.0 beta process was just the best I've participated to:
bug reports were obtained from all possible sources (BIX, US Mail, usenet);
new betas were always fairly easy to install and they included quite some
"magic" to get them to be tested on non-A3000 machines.

Andy and Carolyn quite often responded directly to bug reports and were always
very responsive to pleas for compatibility and Carolyn was instrumental in
getting the RJ file requester fixed, which certainly made my week when it
happened.  The same I can say of Bob 'Kodiak' Burns that listened to my
bug reports on 'we know what' with almost immediate e-mail fixes.  

One of the reasons 2.0 seems to be so solid is, IMHO, the fact that
there were *some* developers that did NOT take the attitute you are 
mentioning above.

-- Marco
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