> The thing is, if you are a poor plumber who causes floods in peoples houses you are not going to be in business for a very long time.
That might be true if the pipes leak after repair or installation. But what if the job holds up long enough to allow the plumber to avoid responsibility?
Same with software. It has to just work well enough to appear functional and for long enough to allow the developer to quickly shed responsibility and put distance between them and the customer. Then blame them for the error and force them to pay for support.
Dealt with an ERP system like that. Didn't matter how fragile or crappy their system was, you had to pay tech support to fix their bugs (windows 7 updates broke it frequently ...) Twice it nuked its own DB and had to restore from backups. We had to pay tech support to tell us that. They're still in business. Once they got you on the hook and their system becomes the companies lifeblood then you tend to eat the crap sandwich and pay up. Then if you leave a bad review they sue you for defamation.
That might be true if the pipes leak after repair or installation. But what if the job holds up long enough to allow the plumber to avoid responsibility?
Same with software. It has to just work well enough to appear functional and for long enough to allow the developer to quickly shed responsibility and put distance between them and the customer. Then blame them for the error and force them to pay for support.
Dealt with an ERP system like that. Didn't matter how fragile or crappy their system was, you had to pay tech support to fix their bugs (windows 7 updates broke it frequently ...) Twice it nuked its own DB and had to restore from backups. We had to pay tech support to tell us that. They're still in business. Once they got you on the hook and their system becomes the companies lifeblood then you tend to eat the crap sandwich and pay up. Then if you leave a bad review they sue you for defamation.