Bug Reports ...

[Richard Billington <buff%pravda@GATECH.EDU>]

Most major computer software systems suppliers provide lists of bug
reports, the bugs' status, and a solution or workaround (the solution
may be "fixed in next release") if it is known. These lists are
updated on a regular basis. Hopefully Symbolics will follow.

In fact, 6 years ago I had a very nice unix-like pc system (QNX) and
these guys had a dial-up patch facility (actually, 7 years ago) where
you could dialup at your conveniance, enter your secret code and get
all the patches, the patches for some subsystem, or the incremental
patches (they had an online db of each of their users, and kept track
of what patches they'd already gotten - you could program your machine
to dial up once a week in the middle of the night and get the latest
fixes!).  We did NOT pay any additional charge beyond the original
purchase price for this.

Not that I would mind paying the *current* software maint. fee to
Symbolics, if this type of update service were available.

BUT even if this weren't done, at LEAST give us some sort of access to
bug reports.  We have been asking for this for so long many are tired
of asking and frankly, some have undoubtedly dropped by the wayside -
how do you justify paying the high software maintenance costs for what
is supposed to be a state of the art software system, when the bug
reports aren't even available, much less on line, much less the system
for distributing fixes averages around once a year for doing so.

Most frightening of all, it would seem that since it's taken so long
for Symbolics to implement a customer-accessable bug-tracking system,
there must not be a particularly good one in-house.