Is NI going to support LabView 8.0 (to publish its updates with bug fixes for free)?

[Brian_Beal]

Microsoft does supply bug fixes for a long time.  They are still fixing Windows2000(for another week or so).  The SCADA software I use, Specview, provides lifetime bug fixes.  You only have to pay for major feature changes.  And that is a tiny company compared to NI.  I truly believe that this is a marketing($$$) issue, not a technical or cost issue.

[MJBrehm]

I concur... when you are a company that can get away with saying... "we don't support that product ( that was released within the last year ) so upgrade or too bad" , it might be you are getting too big for your britches.

Turning a profit is one thing... but making new versions and forcing upgrades.... i dunno... even the evil microsoft is giving free vista upgrades with a new purchase of XP.

just my opinion... but I know I wouldn't last in the cut throat business ends of it... so i won't try.

[Enrique]

I am talking here in general, not directly with NI in mind. I am just jumping into the conversation

I don't think the question is "what type of bug?" As Rashid said, you don't pay thousand of dollars for broken things. I am sure Rashid is not talking of cosmetics bugs like "it looks green when is suppose to be yellow..."

Even worse, it is disrespectful to hear "yeah, it came broken from the factory. It wasn't done right. But for X thousands dollars more you can get the fixed version."

Newer version should be for new features that make my life easier. I don't think correcting a bug is a new feature.

There is a timing issue here too. I noticed customers feel betrayed when they buy something today and just a couple of months later the new, improved version arrives and there are no special considerations for those customers.

[Rashid]

Joe wrote "I personally would like not having to upgrade just have a bug fixed".

I'm fully agreed with this point.

2 all

I don't want to talk about bugs and how they're inconvenient to me, or can be worked around, as it doesn't matter, in my opinion.

Now to make things clearer let me translate the problem the following way:

You bought a car for NNNN dollars. But some things in the car don't work as needed and you go to your seller (that gave you 1 year warranty) and say: you know I have such and such problems.
Ok - says seller, and writes down all your complaints.
For the year the seller wrote down 100 records with your complaints, but to the end of the year fixed only 10 things.

And then the seller says: you know - the year of warranty passed, so if you want your problem to be solved further you must pay 50 % of the car cost! Because we added some new features.

But I don't want new features. I just want my window to raise when I press this button, and not to lift it by hand. That's all I want.

Seller: it is your problems.

I understand that LabView has no rivals, and NI can do everything it wants.

But the next time I'll think twice before to buy something, or at least I will know how much it will cost me in real.

All said above is just my opinion and nothing more,
the humble opinion of the customer that is a little disappointed.

I think you're not right, Ben. No need to exaggarate (W3.1 and so on).

At least, NI could offer something like $300/year for bug fixes (call it bug support for example) or something like this.

I don't like the attitude (approach) of NI in this question. Details don't matter.
And I think that many customers will agree with me.

Best regards,
Rashid.

[Marc_A]

Well technically you can pay $XXX a year and get new versions whenever they're released. That's how my company's license works, and why I always have the newest version. I'm not sure how much it is, though.

I'm not sure I think this is the best way to do things, however. This forces you to put out new versions regularly to keep the companies like mine happy, while alienating the smaller companies and people that pay for each version individually.

[Ben]

Rashid,

Please accept my appologies for my previous posting.

I find this topic interesting and my intensions were to encourage discusion.

I am personally torn on this topic because while I'd love to have all of the bugs fixed, I also can not do so myself in turn for my customers and still feed my family.

So again please accept my appology and thank you for brining this topic up for discusion.

Thank you,

Ben

[tst]

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@marc A wrote:

I'm still waiting for an open source version of a G compiler so I can actually use it at home, but that's another topic.

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The LV license allows you to use your work copy of LV at home. Of course, that means that you've had to pay for a copy of LV, but the company you work for usually does that. This was presumably done to strengthen the LV community and have LV spread more.

Then, of course, there's the much cheaper student edition, but that is (at least technically) only for students and it has an annoying watermark over a considerable part of your FP and BD.

[Rashid]

No problem, Ben.

And now let me direct the topic to more constructive course.

I understand that there's economics. That all developers need to feed themselves and their families and so on.

The question in the following:
why not to make the system more flexible?
why not to include in the product cost the cost of its support, say, for the following 2 years.
I mean only bugs fixing support.
No personnel support, no time wasting for talkings by phone, answering the questions like this.
Just delivering bugs fixes.
(SSP costs something like $900-1000, if to exclude all "personnel support"-like things, maybe it would be possible to offer $200-300 support like bug fixes support, because as to me, for example, I don't need personnel support, I only need software support).

Anyway NI should fix its bugs for new versions.
Then to support old users means (economically) that developers should spend some time and resources for supporting only project branches.

Anyway the program structure must be component-like so that bugs localization and fixing shouldn't be such a BIG problem.

That's why I was so surprised when have known that all IS - AS IS (you know AS).

I'm really fond of LabView.
I really respect command of NI.

Why not to find mutually acceptable solutions?
To calculate everything from the point of economics.

I don't think that somebody will object the common-sense things.

Inspite of the emotions in my posts, the aim of my posts is to draw attention of NI to this problem and to ask to search for solutions. Acceptable solutions both for the customers and for NI itself.

I believe the solution exists.

Best wishes,
Rashid.

[TCPlomp]

The story of NI would be valid IF they had a 'known issues' list.
In that case you would know what bugs you bought

Ton

[becktho]

Hi

I just saw this thread and now also want to give my point of view.

I agree with Rashid, that it is not the best way of fixing bugs. Ok - economics, but leave it be for the moment. In my LV career I first worked with 6i, then 7.0 and know 8.0 - yes, the buggy ones. I found it quite hard to keep up with the version changes. In almost yearly terms a new version was released, and although there were new and interesting features in, I did not upgrade (and propably I now will also wait for LV9.0 or how it's release number will be). You now may ask "why didn't you upgrade?" - well I don't want different version of LV installed on my system (in the beginning I had trouble and I don't want to have such problems again). So everytime I upgrade to a new version, every LV application I developed is also upgraded, which means improved with new features of the new version.

So I'd rather like regular bug fixes (of course free of charge) for about two years or so, and then a new release. This gives me time to redo the apps and also to use the new version when I got used to it. Otherwise I got used to it and 2 days later I am upgrading again.

But as others said - in the end is all about money. And although there once may be an open G compiler, lots of developers will stick to NI's LV, just because of the support (like drivers or other things). At home I use Linux and MS, although I prefer to work with Linux, I once in a while have problems, just because of less supper (also drivers but programs as well).

So to come to an end - the dilemma will remain the same: the big ones get bigger and the small ones will disappear.

Thomas