Michael Gurstein on Tue, 23 May 2000 17:35:44 +0200 (CEST) |
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[Nettime-bold] Fw: Another Detroit in the Making? |
----- Original Message ----- From: Toby Donaldson <donaldson@techbc.ca> Sent: Monday, May 22, 2000 9:24 PM Subject: Another Detroit in the Making? > The U.S. Software Industry and Software Quality: Another Detroit in the > Making? > by Bryan Pfaffenberger <bp@virginia.edu> > 3-May-2000 > Will software makers follow the U.S. auto industry of old down the road of > glitzware? > > "The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's absolutely > not. It's the stupidest reason to buy a new version that I've ever heard.... > And so, in so sense, is [software] stability a reason to move to a new > version. It's never a reason. You won't get a single person to say they'd > buy a new version because of bugs." > > --Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft Corporation, in an interview with reporter > Klaus Brunnstein (Focus, November 1995) > > > Do computer users care about quality? Linux advocates hope so, because it's > unquestionably the case that open-source development methods are capable of > producing some very fine software indeed. As open-source guru Eric Raymond > points out, the nature of open-source development o such as the wide-open > availability of the underlying source code, the ongoing testing of code in > real-world settings, the frequent release cycles o can produce code that's > remarkably free from programming errors. The sheer number of developers > helps, too; as Linus Torvalds puts it, "With enough eyeballs, all bugs are > shallow." > > To be sure, not every program developed with open-source methods is as > beautifully crafted as the Linux kernel, but there's no disputing the fact > that open-source development can indeed produce software of exceptional > quality. If quality matters, Linux ought to have an edge over its commercial > competitors. According to one estimate by a Microsoft internal (see Minasi > 2000:255), the firm's products typically contain an average of 14 to 17 > errors per 1,000 lines of code o a level of quality that can be described as > mediocre. But people keep buying Microsoft products. Vendor executives, > Microsoft's among them, look at their profits and ask why they should bother > improving their firms' software. Sure, they admit, it's possible to produce > software of space-shuttle quality, but doing so is very expensive. Maybe > that level of quality is needed in life-critical systems, such as medical > software, but who needs a quality word processor? Consumers don't care, they > conclude, and so they keep putting out products that are "good enough". > > They're wrong. Dead wrong. Consumers have been putting up with bug-ridden > software for one simple reason: They don't realize there is an alternative. > And once they find out, commercial software vendors are going to lose a big > slice of their business. Where's my evidence for this claim? History. I'm > sure you've heard the famous Santayana quote: "Those who do not remember the > past are condemned to repeat it." (No, that's not a typo; it's Santayana the > philosopher, not Santana the guitarist.) If you're looking for an example, > I've got a doozy for you. According to Mark Minasi, author of a very fine > book entitled The Software Conspiracy (McGraw-Hill, 2000), the U.S. > commercial software industry is making exactly the same mistake that U.S. > auto makers once made, and the results could prove catastrophic to the U.S. > economy. > > > Then: Fins and Features (But Underneath, It's Junk) > Flash back to the 1950s, and take a look at the average new car produced by > one of Detroit's "Big Three" auto makers (GM, Ford, and Chrysler). You'd see > lots of cool features: big, gutsy V-8 engines, flashy chrome bumpers, and > (in 1957, anyway) fins that made the cars look like low-flying rockets. > > If you owned one of these monsters, though, you'd discover another, > less-appealing characteristic: shoddiness. The cars were riddled with > defects and needed frequent repairs. They weren't safe, either, and they > were murder on the environment. Instead of improving their products and > making them safer and less polluting, the Big Three auto makers went to work > on the politicians. They did everything they could to ward off legislation > to give consumers protections against lemons. They opposed air bags. They > tried to fight off pollution standards. In today's markedly more corrupt > political environment, they probably would have succeeded. > > They also went to work on consumers. Money that could have gone into > improving their products, as well as making them safer and less polluting, > went into advertising and marketing instead. The goal? Get consumers back > into the showroom every two or three years to buy a new car with new, > up-to-date styling. Under the hood, of course, they got the same old junk. > > Call it shortsightedness, if you'd like, or just plain greed, but the Big > Three auto makers couldn't see a financial incentive for improving their > products. So they didn't. They knew the cars were junk. They knew they were > unsafe. Sure, every once in a while, they had little twinges of conscience o > such as when an auto executive's kid was killed in a fiery crash, one that > could been prevented had the company paid more attention to safety. They > felt terrible for a few days. (You can read the whole, sick story in J. > Patrick Wright's On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors, published in > 1979.) But all such concerns were sacrificed to the Bottom Line. When > challenged to defend their low-quality cars, the auto makers complained that > the cost of building quality automobiles was simply too high; it could be > done, but you'd pay at least half again as much for that shiny new Chevy. > Consumers were content with the low quality/low price tradeoff, the auto > makers believed. Consumers are buying the cars, they pointed out. The auto > makers were raking in fabulous profits, and making a fantastic contribution > to the economy. > > In fact, consumers weren't content with the cars (or the dealers, but that's > another story). Still, complaining didn't get them anywhere, and for one > simple reason: there wasn't any competition. If U.S. cars were shoddy, they > looked like the space shuttle next to British cars, which (lamentably) > lacked the capital to do anything about their endemic quality problems. > Sure, there were some little Japanese companies that were making > funny-looking, inexpensive cars, but these companies weren't a threat to > Detroit, the auto makers believed. Japanese car makers didn't know anything > about marketing and style, and that's what sells cars in the U.S. > > You probably know the rest of the story. For years, U.S. industrial quality > guru W. Edwards Deming tried to convince Detroit that it was possible to > make high-quality products, and in addition, it's not much more expensive to > do so, as long as you design the quality into the product at the beginning > of production instead of trying to fix the problems at the end. But > Demming's words fell on deaf ears o except in Japan. > > Japanese car makers took Demming's teachings to heart, and they started > making some exceptionally fine automobiles. What's more, they were cheap. > The result? Japanese auto makers grabbed nearly a third of the U.S. market > and most of the international market. As a result, thanks to mounting > Japanese automobile exports and the collapse of the U.S. auto industry > overseas, the U.S. was plunged into the ranks of the world's debtor nations. > > Detroit's story should be clearly understood by everyone who wishes to grasp > the significance of shortsighted, bottom-line thinking in corporations > besotted by too much testosterone. Sure, you make money. In reality, though, > you're doing so only by mortgaging your country's future. You're pushing for > laws that, if passed, would have rolled consumer and environmental > protection back to the Dark Ages. You're creating lasting ill will in a > market that despises your products, and looks desperately for an > alternative. And if you fail to keep your competitors out of the market, you > go down o and you take a huge slice of the economy with you. But who cares? > Your kids and grandkids will pay, not you. > > > Now: Featuritus o and Bugs Galore > Today's commercial software packages have much in common with shoddy U.S. > automobiles of the 1950s and 1960s, according to the software industry's > critics. It's basically the same formula: put out shoddy products, and use > high-pressure marketing to keep consumers focused on new software versions > that offer glitzy new features. In reality, you're hoodwinking people into > buying the same defective product over and over again, but hey o you make > tons of money. And who cares about quality, anyway? Sure, industry > executives concede, we could reduce the number of bugs in our products, they > say, but only by raising the price of our products by 50 percent or more o > and consumers won't stand for it. Quality? We'll give you "good enough" > quality, and that's all you're going to get. > > It's incredibly cavalier of these companies to say that quality isn't needed > in products such as word processors, spreadsheet programs and the rest. > People have lost jobs, flunked classes, and contemplated jumping off bridges > after software glitches destroyed work that was critical to them. And these > very same products are finding their way into virtually every aspect of > life, including situations in which human life and limb could very well be > at stake if the e-mail doesn't get through. Shoddy, bug-ridden software > isn't safe to use under any condition, and these companies know it. My > evidence? Instead of improving their products, commercial software vendors > are busily trying to rewrite U.S. and international law to shield themselves > from the consequences of their corporate negligence. In the U.S., Microsoft > has taken the lead in pushing for the passage of UCITA, a state-level > legislative act that has been opposed by every consumer rights organization > that has ever examined the issue, as well as by 23 U.S. Attorneys General > and computing professional organizations, who correctly describe the > legislation as a major setback not only for consumers, but also for public > safety. > > Sounds like the Detroit game all over again, doesn't it? But wait: there's > more. Inspired by Demming's writings, software development expert Watts > Humphrey o an ex-IBM executive who is now affiliated with Carnegie-Mellon > University's Software Engineering Institute (SEI) o developed a version of > Demming's work for the software industry. And guess what? U.S. software > vendors aren't listening to Humphrey. One reason they're not listening is > that they're too busy jeering Humphrey and ridiculing his work, which is > exactly what U.S. auto-industry executives did to Demming in the 1950s. > (Demming eventually gave up and moved to Japan.) > > What's Humphrey saying? It's simple: software companies can make > high-quality products, and what's more, doing so isn't expensive. Humphrey's > work has evolved into the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), which shows > software developers how to build quality in from the get-go. It also > provides a way of ranking a company's commitment to quality. At Level 1, > companies aren't doing much of anything about quality. At Level 5, they're > up to the Toyota level: they're building quality consciousness into > everything they do, and they're constantly refining and improving their > processes. > > What's more, CMM works. Using CMM-like methods, telecommunications giant US > West Technologies was able to reduce service outages by 79 percent, slice > billing costs by $30 million, and reduce service order errors by 50 percent. > There's an upfront investment required, to be sure, but it pays off in the > long run. In 1990, the cost of ensuring quality at Raytheon Electronics > Systems ate up nearly two-thirds of all software development costs. Thanks > to CMM, Raytheon is putting out even better software, but the cost of > assuring this quality has fallen below 10 percent of software development > budgets. And what about bugs? Based in Chennai, India, a contract software > developer called Advanced Information Services (IAS) o one of the few CMM > Level 5 companies in existence o is cranking out code with only 0.05 defects > per thousand lines of code. That's better than the space shuttle's software. > This level of achievement isn't putting IAS out of business o far from it: > their profits have doubled. On average, companies that adopt CMM realize a > fivefold return on their investment. > > Who's listening to Humphrey? CMM critics affiliated with Microsoft charge > that CMM creates an unwieldy bureaucracy that forestalls the kind of > brilliant innovation that's leading the software industry. Give me a break! > If Microsoft supposedly exemplifies the type of organization that would be > "paralyzed" by CMM to the point that it couldn't innovate, we might all be > much better off. As near as I can tell, the lion's share of Microsoft > products that could be termed "innovative" in some sense o MS-DOS, Windows, > FrontPage and others o either originated outside the company, were based on > ideas that were developed outside the company, or were acquired by > purchasing an outside company. Microsoft's innovations seem limited to > figuring out new ways of introducing dysfunctional extensions to prevailing > standards for no other reason than the firm's desire to put its competitors > out of business. > > So who is listening? As of this writing, only 19 software companies are > certified at Level 5, and 13 of them are in India. That's right: India. If > you think India is a backward country that couldn't possibly compete in the > high-tech sweepstakes, you'd better think again, because Indian software > companies are putting out some of the best software in the world. Near > Bangalore, India, a CMM-driven, Level 5 shop is turning out software with > 0.03 defects per thousand lines of code. Right now in India, there's a > replay of exactly the same process that energized the Japanese automobile > industry thirty years ago. They see the opportunity. They have the talent. > They know they can create world-class software. They're doing it right now. > > When asked whether Indian software firms pose a threat to their near > stranglehold on the consumer software market, U.S. software executives > laugh. They point out that these silly foreign companies don't know anything > about style or marketing; there's no way they could make it in the U.S. > market. Now where have we heard that before? > > > What Can You Do? > First, buy ten copies of Mark Minasi's exceptionally fine book, The Software > Conspiracy: Why Software Companies Put Out Faulty Products, How They Can > Hurt You, and What You Can Do About It (McGraw-Hill, 2000) and give a copy > to everyone you know who's in a position to influence software purchasing > decisions. Mail them a copy of this article, too. My major criticism of > Mark's book is that he doesn't weave open-source software in general, and > Linux in particular, into the picture. I believe Linux is exposing the need > and the thirst for high-quality software, and that the high quality of Linux > and other open-source programs is in large measure responsible for its rapid > growth and acceptance. > > Second, get the word out about UCITA. Visit http://www.badsoftware.com and > the Consumer Project on Technology home page (http://www.cptech.org). If > you're in a U.S. state where UCITA next comes up for ratification, organize > street protests, write letters to legislators, get the word out, and fight > it! There's still time to defeat this monster, but we have got to get > organized NOW! > > Third, join the battle to promote software engineering, high-quality > software, and responsible behavior by software vendors. Read Watts > Humphrey's comments on software quality at > http://www.2bguide.com/docs/whsq.html and then visit the Software > Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie-Mellon University, with which > Humphreys is affiliated. > > Fourth, convince any organization with which you are affiliated o your > school, your company, the non-profit organizations where you volunteer o > that purchasing commercial vendors' products is aiding and abetting a > process that is exposing the public to unwarranted risk, generating > legislation that is harmful to public welfare, and retarding the progress of > technology. Show them Linux, help them install it, and invite them to > consider what people are slowly but surely learning: you don't have to put > up with shoddy software. > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- > ---- > > > > > Bryan Pfaffenberger is a professor in the new Media Studies program at the > University of Virginia, where he will teach two courses next fall (Media > Studies 317: Intellectual Property and Digital Media, and Media Studies 110: > Information Technology and Digital Media). He lives in Charlottesville, > Virginia. > > Copyright 2000 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. > _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold