Anyhow, I don’t want to single out any particular piece of software or its developers and insult them, I think–that’s why I didn’t just name the software.

-Max

It still does. Maybe once per two months (1.4.10).

-Max

Actually I guess that people at Apple went to the same conclusion when they decided to announce the next version of their OS with 0 new feature. The only moto is “more robust, faster, easier”. But, as advertised, Snow Leopard contains the same feature as the previous Leopard version.

And Microsoft is more or less going in the same direction, presenting Windows 7 as a “Vista without bugs”, isn’t it?

“Suck less”, I am now crossing my fingers, hoping this can be heard by more software companies.

You’re welcome. Thanks for the great comment.

-Max

I also think that around that time people were getting wiser about software engineering, and seeking out tracking systems. There was beginning to be more focus on team engineering methodologies (don’t get me started) and there was an in creased demand for tracking products. So when the commercial solutions came out to fill this need … the demand for open source systems like Bugzilla went up.

-Max

Your vector of thought appears slightly different (i.e. you only measured your suckitude against your own prior releases), but the advice is timeless. Thanks.

Well, one thing that really helped us with Bugzilla was that I did a survey: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bugzilla:Survey

Also, some students from Carnegie-Mellon University did a usability study on Bugzilla and came up with a lot of really great results.

-Max

-Max

-Max

They changed their SOAP model between 2 and 3. https://developer.mozilla.org/en/SOAP_in_Gecko-based_Browsers

This has a major impact on software I would be using with Firefox, and why I’ve nearly completely switched over to Chrome at work.

Firefox 3.5 has a major load time issue that seems unlikely to be resolved in the short term: http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2009/07/workaround-for-firefox-3-5-slow-startups-on-windows/

And those students of history would realize that the real browser that has been innovative, and sucks less with each release — Opera. That is if you read their press releases and news articles and such.

-Max

You mention “…with every release, our download numbers kept going up. And always significantly–30-50% more…”. In the for-profit world those would be called customer wins, or something similar.

Later on though, you say “As long as you consistently suck less with every release, you will retain most of your users…”. That’s customer retention.

Your thesis about sucking less seems to me primarily relevant to customer retention, and not particularly relevant to customer wins.

How do you explain your growth rates with a relatively modest, incrementalist strategy like sucking less? Were you winning converts from other products? There was no attempt in your article to support this idea. Perhaps the market overall was growing rapidly and you merely shared in that.

I’m not suggesting that you are wrong, but I’m not sure your thesis is strong enough to stand on it’s own either. From a personal perspective I like the idea of sucking less. However lots of personal and corporate buying decisions are features driven.

From the user’s perspective, Vista sucked because Microsoft took so long to release it that there were serious compatibility issues. When you release a new OS every two years, ISVs keep up. When you release one every seven years, people get complacent and think that they can use NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 APIs forever. I agree that in a lot of ways, Vista was better. But Windows 7 clearly sucks a lot less than Vista, from reports (in fact, this is pretty much the main thing that I hear about it), and it’s getting much better press. So in this case, sucking less and getting good press could be intimately connected.

-Max

Or, to an extreme take Windows Vista. It was a necessary rework, far more forward thinking than previous Windows OSs yet because of a very rough release (but when has any major, massive new os release been “smooth?”) it was brutalized by many of the “knowledgeable” IT people even though its massively improved with each patch and SP. Now, Win7 (which is Vista SP2.5 really) is getting great press and reviews. So, is it always fixing bugs and making it suck “less” that wins users or good press?

Both work I think. Sorry if this rambles a bit, been a long day

-Max

-Max

Perhaps it is obvious to you and to me, but sometimes it’s actually the emphasis of importance that matters in data, not just the existence of the data itself.

As far as Firefox goes, I’d say that also really just took the Mozilla Suite and took a lot of the sucking out of it, and all of the sudden it was enormously popular. I’d say that “making the browser suck less” may have even been one of the main design goals of Firefox (though of course stated differently, or not stated at all), as somebody who, while not actually involved in Firefox development, was generally around the Mozilla community during the time of its development.

-Max

-Max