Visibility in Open Source

[Dale Schumacher]

 The recent responses to possible issues with the GTA02v5 is a perfect
illustration of why many companies will not open their process.  As Mikko
and others have pointed out, THERE ARE NO PERFECT PRODUCTS.  With a closed
company, YOU simply don't know about "known" defects, future improvements,
etc.  So you happily buy their current products and they happily go on
making the trade-off between the risk of negative publicity caused by
discovery of their flaws and the profits they are making by keeping you
ignorant of problems they don't want to fix.

If you want to hear the truth, you must be prepared for the fact that you
might not like some of the things you hear.  OM is doing a WONDERFUL job of
keeping all of us informed and disclosing details that scare most other
companies.  The trade-off they are making is between the improvements that
they want to make (a never-ending list) and the demand from the market
(that's us) to get a useful product in our hands.  The product currently
under production is clearly useful--with or without LED current issues--and
OM has decided that it's ready to go to market.  We should all support their
decision rather than complaining about small defects, known or
yet-to-be-discovered.  The product will always be improving.  I'm ready to
start using it NOW.

As an example from another area, consider the books on your bookshelf.  With
each printing minor corrections are made.  Does that mean you should not buy
a "first edition, first printing" copy?  How long should you wait?  When
will it be "perfect"?
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