Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!dsinc!netnews.upenn.edu!vax1.cc.lehigh.edu!cert.sei.cmu.edu!krvw From: RADAI@HUJIVMS.BITNET (Y. Radai) Newsgroups: comp.virus Subject: FSP and sales figures (was: Into the 1990s) Message-ID: <0008.9105281939.AA08091@ubu.cert.sei.cmu.edu> Date: 28 May 91 12:49:00 GMT Sender: Virus Discussion List Lines: 38 Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu Ross Greenberg writes in response to my posting: > To paraphrase your past arguments for the readership, I believe you > commented that FSP's installation was such a pain in the butt that few >people used the integrity checking feature FSP includes. Well yes, I was referring to that ... plus the fact that after three years of existence FSP still has no provision for checking the partition record (master boot record) ... plus the fact that for any given file, FSP gives the same checksum for all users, which (imho) is a security hole. (At least, these were true the last time I looked.) But just to show that I don't think your integrity checking is *all* bad :-) , I found that FSP was faster than any program based on a CRC over the entire file. I gladly accept your suggestion to continue the discussion on these points at the Virus Bulletin conference. (In fact, part of my lecture will deal with weaknesses like the above even if I don't specifically mention FSP.) But in my last posting I was concerned with FSP not in itself, but merely as an *example*: Since the vast majority of users don't check for weaknesses like these before they buy a program like FSP, high sales figures do not prove that the software is good. I don't deny that quality of software has *some* relevance to sales volume. The question is *how much?*. You didn't react to my statement that if the correlation were high, "we could completely dispense with all the quality comparisons that are continually being made in the literature, and simply quote sales figures." Is that what you're suggesting? Anyone else in this forum have an opinion on how high the correla- tion is between quality of software and sales volume (for products in the same price range)? Y. Radai Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, Israel RADAI@HUJIVMS.BITNET RADAI@VMS.HUJI.AC.IL