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July 16-31, 2000 MASTER FILE |
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Software Conspiracy Software defects have directly cost millions of dollars in losses to firms and hundreds of lives. More than 90 per cent of the bugs that consumers report to software vendors were already known to the latter before the product was shipped. Powerful software CEOs think that you're completely unaware of software quality and that as long as they keep adding useless features, you'll keep buying. Software firms routinely spring conditions on you after you've paid for their product, but before you can install it on your computer: conditions they won't let you see before you pay for it; conditions that absolve them for any wrongs the product may do to your data. How to stand up for your rights in the realm of defective software? By Bryan Pfaffenberger
Do computer users care about quality? Linux advocates hope so, because it's unquestionably the case that open-source development methods are capable of producing some very fine software indeed. As open-source guru Eric Raymond points out, the nature of open-source development-such as the wide-open availability of the underlying source code, the ongoing testing of code in real-world settings, the frequent release cycles-can produce code that's remarkably free from errors. The sheer number of developers helps, too; as Linus Torvalds puts it, "With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." To be sure, not every program developed with open-source methods is as beautifully crafted as the Linux kernel, but there's no disputing the fact that open-source development can indeed produce software of exceptional quality. If quality matters, Linux ought to have an edge over its commercial competitors. According to one estimate by a Microsoft internal, the company's products typically contain an average of 14 to 17 errors per 1,000 lines of code-a level of quality that can be very much described as mediocre. But people keep buying Microsoft products. The MS Juggernaut
Vendor executives, Microsoft's among them, look at their profits and ask why they should bother improving their firms' software. Sure, they admit, it's possible to produce software of space-shuttle quality, but doing so is very expensive. Maybe that level of quality is needed in life-critical systems, such as medical software, but who needs a quality word processor? Consumers don't care, they conclude, and so they keep putting out products that are "good enough". They're wrong. Dead wrong. Consumers have been putting up with bug-ridden software for one simple reason: they don't realise there is an alternative. And once they find out, commercial software vendors are going to lose a big slice of their business. Where's my evidence for this claim? History. I'm sure you've heard the famous Santayana quote: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (No, that's not a typo; it's Santayana the philosopher, not Santana the guitarist.) If you're looking for an example, I've got a doozy for you. Says Mark Minasi, author of a fine book entitled The Software Conspiracy (McGraw-Hill, 1999), the commercial software industry is making exactly the same mistake that US auto makers once made, and the results could prove catastrophic to the US economy. (See box) Then: Fins and Features Flash back to the 1950s, and take a look at the average new car produced by one of Detroit's "Big Three" auto makers (GM, Ford and Chrysler). You'd see lots of cool features: big, gutsy V-8 engines, flashy chrome bumpers, and (in 1957, anyway) fins that made the cars look like low-flying rockets. If you owned one of these monsters, though, you'd discover another, less-appealing characteristic: shoddiness. The cars were riddled with defects and needed frequent repairs. They weren't safe either, and they were murder on the environment. Instead of improving their products and making them safer and less polluting, the Big Three auto makers went to work on the politicians. They did everything they could to ward off legislation to give consumers protections against lemons. They opposed air bags. They tried to fight off pollution standards. In today's markedly more corrupt political environment, they probably would have succeeded. They also went to work on consumers. Money that could have gone into improving their products, as well as making them safer and less polluting, went into advertising and marketing instead. The goal? Get consumers into the showroom every two or three years to buy a new car with new, up-to-date styling. Under the hood, of course, they got the same old junk. Call it short-sightedness, if you'd like, or just plain greed, but the Big Three couldn't see a financial incentive for improving their products. So they didn't. They knew the cars were junk. They knew they were unsafe. Sure, every once in a while they had little twinges of conscience-such as when an auto executive's kid was killed in a fiery crash, one that could have been prevented had the company paid more attention to safety. They felt terrible for a few days. (You can read the whole, sick story in J. Patrick Wright's On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors, published in 1979.) But all such concerns were sacrificed to the bottom line. When challenged to defend their low-quality cars, the auto makers complained that the cost of building quality automobiles was simply too high; it could be done, but you'd pay at least half again as much for that shiny new Chevy. Consumers were content with the low-quality low price trade-off, the auto makers believed. Consumers are buying the cars, they pointed out. The auto makers were raking in fabulous profits, and making a fantastic contribution to the economy. In fact, consumers weren't content with the cars (or the dealers, but that's another story). Still, complaining didn't get them anywhere, and for one simple reason: there wasn't any competition. If US cars were shoddy, they looked like the space shuttle next to British cars, which (lamentably) lacked the capital to do anything about their endemic quality problems. Sure, there were some little Japanese companies that were making funny-looking, inexpensive cars, but these companies weren't a threat to Detroit, the auto makers believed. Japanese car makers didn't know much about marketing and style, and that's what sells cars in the US. You probably know the rest of the story. For years, US industrial quality guru W. Edwards Deming tried to convince Detroit that it was possible to make high-quality products, and in addition it's not much more expensive to do so as long as you design the quality into the product at the beginning of production instead of trying to fix the problems at the end. But Deming's words fell on deaf ears-except in Japan. Japanese car makers took Deming's teachings to heart, and they started making some exceptionally fine automobiles. What's more, they were cheap. The result? Japanese auto makers grabbed nearly a third of the US market and most of the international market. As a result, thanks to mounting Japanese automobile exports and the collapse of the US auto industry overseas, the US was plunged into the ranks of the world's debtor nations. Detroit's story should be clearly understood by everyone who wishes to grasp the significance of shortsighted, bottom-line thinking in corporations besotted by too much testosterone. Sure, you make money. In reality, though, you're doing so only by mortgaging your country's future. You're pushing for laws that, if passed, would have rolled consumer and environmental protection back to the Dark Ages. You're creating lasting ill will in a market that despises your products, and looks for an alternative. And if you fail to keep your competitors out of the market, you go down-and you take a huge slice of the economy with you. Now: Bugs Galore Today's commercial software packages have much in common with the shoddy US automobiles of the 1950s and 1960s, according to the software industry's critics. It's basically the same formula: put out shoddy products and use high-pressure marketing to keep consumers focused on new software versions that offer glitzy new features. In reality, you're hoodwinking people into buying the same defective product over and over again, but hey-you make tons of money. And who cares about quality, anyway? Sure, industry executives concede that they could reduce the number of bugs in their products, but only by raising the price of their products by 50 per cent or more-and consumers won't stand for it. "Quality? We'll give you 'good enough' quality, and that's all you're going to get," they say. It's incredibly cavalier of these companies to say that quality isn't needed in products such as word processors, spreadsheet programs and the rest. People have lost jobs, flunked classes and contemplated jumping off bridges after software glitches destroyed work that was critical to them. And these very same products are finding their way into virtually every aspect of life, including situations in which human life and limb could very well be at stake if the E-mail doesn't get through. Shoddy, bug-ridden software isn't safe to use under any condition, and these companies know it. My evidence? Instead of improving their products, commercial software vendors are busily trying to rewrite United States and international law to shield themselves from the consequences of their corporate negligence. In the US, the Redmond software giant has taken the lead in pushing for the passage of UCITA, a state-level legislative Act that has been opposed by every consumer rights organisation that has ever examined the issue, as well as by 23 US attorneys general and various organisations of computing professional, who correctly describe the legislation as a major setback not only for consumers, but also for public safety. |
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The reason we come up with
new versions is not to fix bugs. It's absolutely not. It's the stupidest
reason to buy a new version that I've ever heard... And so, in no sense,
is [software] stability a reason to move to a new version. It's never a
reason. You won't get a single person to say they'd buy a new version
because of bugs." - Bill Gates, Chairman
of Microsoft Corp., in an interview with reporter Klaus Brunnstein (Focus,
November 1995)
