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

[Rashid]

Hello!

I have a question to NI support.

A little preamble.
In the end of 2005 our company bought LabView 8.0 Professional for Windows XP.

For the last year there was a set (about 50-100?) of bugs discovered by users of your product (and I was amongst these users too).

Everyone can read about bugs in "Monthly Bugs" reports on this site.
(saying for those who doesn't know).

And now the question:
if I'm not planning to upgrade LV 8.0 to LV 8.2 as I don't need OOP and other new features right now,
will I have the opportunity to get bug fixes for my LV 8.0?

(I already downloaded LV 8.0.1, but there was fixed only part of bugs).

The local support (in my country) said to me that if I want to continue getting updates with bug fixes I'll have to upgrade to LV 8.2 because NI won't publish updates with bug fixes for LV 8.0 anymore.

They said that from the moment LV 8.2 was released, supporting of LV 8.0 ends, in other words there won't be any updates for LV 8.0 like LV 8.0.1 (for free).

IS IT TRUE? Did I get all right?

Thanks in advance for any clarification.

[Joe_H]

Yes you are correct. you will not see anymore patches for LV8.0 you will have to upgrade to LV 8.20 to get the fixes.

[Rashid]

Thanks for reply, Joe.

All the following please consider as my complaints to NI.

Frankly speaking, when my local support told me this, I thought they're wrong.

But now... I don't know how to tell exactly what I feel - I'm very disappointed by such a policy of NI.

To upgrade LV 8.0 to LV 8.2 will cost out company $2300
(as my support has told me, SSP included). For us it's not the money that lies on the road.

I understand that NI declares its product AS IS.
But not to support bug fixes??!
This is a first time I meet such a policy.

I don't need extra features. All I want is that a product
we paid for $5000 was free of bugs. Even if it must be updated {n} times to fix bugs.

I understand that for USA or Europe, $2300 is perhaps not much, but in our country it equals to about 6-month average earnings of one man.

Anyway the matter isn't in the money even, but in the whole approach.

Best regards from Russia.

P.S. Inspite of the words above, my respect to all developers who created and support LabView is infinite.

Message Edited by Rashid on 12-20-2006 10:35 AM

[Brian_Beal]

In general, I am going to have to agree with Rashid.  I can understand having to pay for new features, but why should we have to pay for bug fixes?  7.0 is a good example.  It was rather buggy, a patch was developed early on, but then to fix everything else you had to wait for, and buy, 7.1.

[Joe_H]

I agree with you. Unfortunately as sorry as it may be that is the way NI does it.

Seems almost intentional.

[Ben]

Just to give this another spin....

If M$ had the policy of free updates for buggy code...

1) My Windows 3.1 license would been a life time use license

2) We would be asking "Bill who?"

If doctors had the policy of free fixes...

3) We need to establish a draft to get enough doctors

4) We would encourage our children to grow up be cowboys, and lawyers and stuff.

Now for my curiosity:

What kind of bug did you have in the first place?

Ben

[Steve.Briggs]

To further Ben's point, what type of business do you work for Rashid...?  I'm going to assume it's one that works for a profit.  In order to reach that profit you have to develop new material to attract the consumer.  This is what NI is simply trying to do, reach out to the consumer by releasing new versions of their product.

What type of bug(s) are giving you so much trouble?  If you spend some time just looking around on the forums you can pretty much find a quick fix for any problem/bug you approach.

[Marc_A]

Well, I don't really agree that the Microsoft analogy applies here. Windows XP is not just 3.1 with bug fixes, it is an entirely new version with many new features. The problem here is that going from 8.0 to 8.2 costs thousands of dollars, when he just needs a bug fix, not all the new features.

Windows Vista is coming out, but does that mean MS will stop doing updates for XP? Of course not, not for a few years anyway. While I do agree that older versions of LabVIEW should be supported and fixed for a certain amount of time after a new major upgrade comes out, I don't think that it will happen.

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.

[Steve.Briggs]

It's hard to make this comparison.  Much like apples to oranges.  Microsoft is one of the largest companies in the world and is able to offer updates and support on nearly all of their products.

[Joe_H]

NI is not that small of a company that it cannot support older versions for a certain amount of time. I personally would like not having to upgrade just have a bug fixed.

I would like to see them support 1 version back for a year after the new version release. this is ample enough time to find and fix bugs. i would also like to see patches for free every couple of months during this year as a curtesy to us.