Some days...
Some days, I am very proud to work at this company - and today is one of them. I have to admit there are some days that I am both embarrassed and apologetic for things I've seen us do but I can tell you they are the rare days. You've heard me say several times that we take customer feedback very seriously and we listen. Today was a good day...
We've been having a good conversation on my SP1 thread. We've gotten several good bits of feedback from that thread, from Soma's blog and from others. I did 3 things today:
I sent mail to Soma and the marketing team about the feedback we are getting about supporting VS2003 on Vista. He had heard the same feedback and had already called a meeting for today with the appropriate people in the division to discuss it. I can't promise we're going to change our position but the feedback is being heard at the highest level and being seriously considered.
Next I sent mail to Soma, and a handful of other people up and down the customer support hierarchy, DevDev Servicing team and product groups about the feedback you've given me on the difficulty of discovering and downloading hot fixes. Everyone agreed that this is good feedback and a problem worth solving. We proposed a trial (for some portion of VS) of creating a broadly available download site that would include a list of hot fixes and the ability to download them and give feedback. Within 3 hours, we had agreement and had identified 5 people to put together a plan. I am expecting to hear a proposal and timeline by the end of next week. And you think Microsoft is big and fat and can't respond quickly?
Lastly, I sent mail to the Framework team to find out more info about their SP plan and detailed on the JIT bug involving String.IsNullOrEmpty. I discovered that the resolution of the bug on the Product Feedback center was incorrect. The CLR team takes fixing JIT bugs VERY seriously. They have fixed the issue, plan to release the fix in Orcas and in a Whidbey service pack before then. In the mean time, there are some work arounds. I found that they are working on a plan for .NET 2.0 SP1 but haven't been in a hurry because the quality of what they shipped has been very high. They have received very few hot fix requests and this is a key metric they use in determining how urgent an SP is. I haven't searched hard for issues people have had but I'll say we've built a huge .NET based app (Team Foundation Server) and what they say resonates to me - we have found very little in the way of serious issues. None-the-less, they are working on an SP1 plan and will ship one although I don't have a date at this point.
I have a comment ready to go back at work with responses to more points on the SP1 thread and I'll submit it as soon as I get back to the office. I had to leave early today to go to my sister-in-law's wedding rehersal :)
Some days are great days. Thanks for your feedback and I promise we'll keep listening. I can't promise we'll do everything you ask but we'll certainly consider all of it and when there's concensus, it makes sense, it's economically viable and can be fit in with all of the other priorities (also driven by customers), we'll do it.
Brian
