2 community members bet PoW2 would be out in June - August last year... until we see some proof I am going long on the release date.
I'd like to know: Do you guys really think, that development works so much smoother in "normal" businesses?
For this I'd like to tell you a little story:
I use a CAE software solution at work which is developed by one of the market leaders in that segment. The software is under license (annual fee for usage and continous improvement of the software) and the company I work for is not a key customer to the software company.
About one year ago their customer support offered us to give beta-access to test a new feature which might prove very helpfull in our daily work. It was one of their big things to be implemented in the new software version to come and was announced years before and already delayed heavily.
The beta-testing of it showed following:
- The new feature was hardly working and most of the time spent testing it, I was trying to get a stable run.
- Most of the functionalities the feature offered didn't work.
- Bugs reported to the support took weeks to get a short reply and most didn't get solved.
- During this time the feature still got promoted by using stable live demos.
- The demos could be reproduced in the beta version but small modifications would break them.
About 3 months ago the new version of the software was released including the new feature.
I tested it again with a 3 month trial:
- The new feature requires an own (costly) sublicense.
- New functionalities added but most don't work.
- Customer support ignores requests about the feature.
- More bugs added.
- Some key functionalities removed.
- We have no clue when a usable version of the feature could be available.
Can you tell me if you would rather have the Gulden developers work like this successful worldwide operating company?