“There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed. … I'm saying we don't do a new version to fix bugs. We don't. Not enough people would buy it. You can take a hundred people using Microsoft Word. Call them up and say "Would you buy a new version because of bugs?" You won't get a single person to say they'd buy a new version because of bugs. We'd never be able to sell a release on that basis.”

—  Bill Gates

Focus Magazine No. 43 (23 October 1995) http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html &lt;!-- pages 206-212 --&gt; <br class="br">1990s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed. … I'm saying we…" by Bill Gates?
Bill Gates photo
Bill Gates92
American business magnate and philanthropist 1955

Related quotes

Richard Stallman photo

“When I released GNU Emacs and people started using it, they started sending me improvements in the mail. So I would get a message with a bug fix, and a message with a new feature, and another bug fix, and another new feature, and another… and another… until they were pouring in on me so fast that just taking advantage of all of the help people were giving me was a big job. Microsoft doesn't have this problem.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System", address at LinuxTag (July 2000)
2000s

Brian W. Kernighan photo

“Each new user of a new system uncovers a new class of bugs.”

Brian W. Kernighan (1942) Canadian computer scientist

Programming Pearls http://www.bowdoin.edu/~ltoma/teaching/cs340/spring05/coursestuff/Bentley_BumperSticker.pdf. CACM. 28 (9). September 1985

Larry Wall photo

“There are still some other things to do, so don't think if I didn't fix your favorite bug that your bug report is in the bit bucket. (It may be, but don't think it.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[7238@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

Eoin Colfer photo

“My bugs don't have bugs.”

Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl

Source: Artemis Fowl

“A bug! A bug! Isn’t it just so satisfying to discover bugs in other people’s programs? Especially people from Microsoft. I don’t know why, it’s probably some kind of Freudian code-envy thing.”

Paul DiLascia (1959–2008) American software developer

1995/6
About Microsoft

Larry Wall photo

“If you remove stricture from a large Perl program currently, you're just installing delayed bugs, whereas with this feature, you're installing an instant bug that's easily fixed. Whoopee.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199710050130.SAA04762@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Martin Fowler photo

“People also underestimate the time they spend debugging. They underestimate how much time they can spend chasing a long bug. With testing, I know straight away when I added a bug. That lets me fix the bug immediately, before it can crawl off and hide. There are few things more frustrating or time wasting than debugging. Wouldn't it be a hell of a lot quicker if we just didn't create the bugs in the first place?”

Martin Fowler (1963) British programmer

Martin Fowler (2002) as cited in Evolutionary Design: A Conversation with Martin Fowler, Part III by Bill Venners, November 18, 2002.

Larry Wall photo

“That is a known bug in 5.00550. Either an upgrade or a downgrade will fix it.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[6vu1vo%2489c@kiev.wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Eric Schmidt photo

“When you use Google, do you get more than one answer? Of course you do. Well, that’s a bug. We have more bugs per second in the world. We should be able to give you the right answer just once. We should know what you meant. You should look for information. We should get it exactly right and we should give it to you in your language and we should never be wrong. That’s our challenge.”

Eric Schmidt (1955) software engineer, businessman

Charlie Rose interview, 3 Jun 2005 https://charlierose.com/videos/17574, quoted in An Old Eric Schmidt Interview Reveals Google’s End-Game For Search And Competition https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/04/an-old-eric-schmidt-interview-reveals-googles-end-game-for-search-and-competition/ by TechCrunch (4 Jan 2013).

Ward Cunningham photo

“In the months before I made wiki, we had been having an argument. I think Kent Beck and I were on one side. People who had a lot of faith in the prevailing dogma of software engineering were on the other side. We said, "Collective code ownership is good." They said, "That's ridiculous. You'll never get responsibility. You'll never get quality if you don't have responsibility. And the only way you'll get responsibility is ownership. You have to pin the bugs back on somebody if you want them to ever rise above producing bugs."”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

And I said, "Well that's wrong."
A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Collective Ownership of Code and Text

Related topics