Re: Ada Operating System

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

And the really tough question is: "What would *you* be willing to warrant
about the software *you* write?" While I know that I personally bend every
effort and utilize the best available technology to produce high quality
software, would I be willing to bet the company by claiming that the
software has no defects and that any defects found will be fixed or you have
some legal recourse to sue me for dammages? Probably not for anything beyond
the most trivial software.

The problem comes down to testing and validation. How can we demonstrate to
our lawyer's satisfaction that what we built is solid enough that they can
defend us in court against any and all warranty claims? Can we satisfy
ourselves that "It behaves as we claim it will in the manual" that we would
stand behind it with the company's bank account? What happens if it crashes
because of system services or other software colliding with it or it doesn't
run on some particular configuration or etc..... ??? Do we start writing
checks to all the customers who ever experience a crash while running our
software?

Personally, I might be willing to put out a given product and offer a money
back guarantee if not completely satisfied, while remaining unwilling to
warrant against all defects and all possible damages. I might have
sufficient confidence in an application that I'd believe the returns would
be small. The only problem with that scenario is how is a company to make
sure that the "dissatisfied customer" isn't keeping an "emergency offsite
backup" of the software they are returning? :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Darren New" <dnew@san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3CA1F5F8.A81D9EA1@san.rr.com...
>
> That's why most software vendors disclaim any warrantees.
>