Attention: We have retired the ASP.NET Community Blogs. Learn more >

The endless fall to uselessness of MS Connect

I ran into a new low for Microsoft Connect product feedback. Check this item (you have to login with your MS Passport/Live ID. I don't know why). The title is "When will .NET 2.0 service pack 1 be out (IF ever) ?", I posted this on April 17th. The title explains it all.

Today I got a reply (whoa, after one month already). The status is now changed to "Resolved (Fixed)". This is the comment Microsoft posted:

Thanks for your post. Our plans are always to deliver the necessary roll-up of a product in Service pack form when it makes the most (positive) impact. We continue to deliver necessary fixes (QFEs and GDRs) in the meantime and we've delivered a SP1 for Visual Studio.

smileyshocked

Did this person look at the calendar lately (more than a year without any service pack)? And when is releasing a bunch of fixes not positive?

I have no other words to say than that this was the last time I reported anything back to Microsoft through that stupid Connect interface: the group of people in charge of dealing with the posted items is simply not capable to understand that the people who post the items are their customers and take time to make Microsoft's work better so the life of the customer will become better because the product they work with for 8-10 hours a day has less bugs/glitches/nasties etc. VS.NET 2005 isn't the only part we have to deal with: .NET 2.0 is also a part we have to deal with, and more importantly: our customers have to deal with solely that part: .NET 2.0.

A lovely example of the 'support' quality Microsoft is willing to provide. Who was it again who said "Developers! Developers! Developers!" ? Oh never mind...

11 Comments

  • What is the issue you are running into with .NET Framework 2.0?

    We've actually already released several GDRs via Windows Update that roll-up QFE's and bug-fixes.

    Send me mail (scottgu@microsoft.com) if there a specific bug fix that you are looking to have fixed?

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Scott: it's not about me requiring a specific fix for a .NET 2.0 bug, although there are a couple of things which aren't great, what's the matter is that the customers of ISV's who write software for .NET now can't simply download the service pack and be done with it. This means that ISV's have to jump through hoops to work around issues as their customers can't download a simple SP.

    It should be key and first priority for microsoft that they release their QFE's etc. every 2-3 months in a rollup and every 6 months in a service pack. It's now more than 1.5 years without any official service pack for .NET 2.0, I think that's way too long.

  • Hi Frans,

    GDR's are publically available downloads, and are automatically installed on machines enrolled via Windows Update. They are roll-up releases of multiple QFE's and not one off patches.

    So ISV's shouldn't have to jump through hoops today - the fixes they need should be in the GDRs.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Scott: so there are no fixes not released to the public? All fixes for .NET 2.0 are available ? I never saw a rollup for .NET 2.0 on windows update, perhaps I missed something... ?

    It would be great if all fixes made for .NET 2.0 are already released and out there, though if so, I then wonder why I never saw these fixes available at windows update, or I might have overlooked them (very much possible, so excuse me if I made a mistake :))

  • Looks like you have some mighty blog readers.. ;-) Keep that connection!

  • Frans, at least you are lucky, someone replied. If you look at this other bug report, you can see that it has been closed (Won't fixed), without any explanation provided: www.connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=227522
    And this bug is a major pain since VS 2005 SP1.

  • I posted a bug (https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=98339) on 20/04/2006.
    The next day, someone posted 'Thank you, Visual Studio Product Team.'.
    Since then, the bug report must have been laying asleep under some rock ...

  • Fabrice: ugh... You then wonder how they get away with things like this.

    Another example:
    https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=277761

    It's a silly loop of a couple of lines which checks every filename in the MRU list if its present on disk and removes it from the MRU list if it's not present (you will run into an error anyway if you click on it). Eventually add a boolean setting to make this optional.

    If that's so complicated that there's NOT enough time (he posted this issue for every vs.net version already, they always closed it with different excuses) to finish this on time, I wonder how they even get things done at all.

    Microsoft, we're living inside this IDE for 8-10 hours a day. Every rough edge is one we WILL run into and likely more than once. It's these rough edges which makes things less pleasant to work with. The simple things. Like when you press cntrl--, to go to the last position you were: the line is OR at the top OR at the bottom of the screen, never in the middle of the screen, so you have to hunt for the line, scroll everything in view again...

    I won't refer to the DataGridView bug I reported at least a year ago which they didn't fix at all and postponed till AFTER orcas... I simply wonder WHY things aren't fixed for the simple fact that they're broken and SOMEONE will run into that bug (perhaps often!) and when it's fixed the fix is released to the public, in easy to install service packs in a frequent basis (read: once every 6 months TOPS).

    Is that too much to ask?

  • Hi Frans,

    Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on the question above.

    Basically there are three levels of bug fixes that get made:

    QFE Hotfixes: These are individual fixes that are distributed reactively and for smaller audiences. Typically you have to call product support to get them. Widely requested ones are available for download on a web-site.

    GDRs: These are more generally redistributed patches. Anyone can download them, and if they are .NET Framework issues they are distributed on Windows Update (although only security issues are typically pushed down automatically). GDRs will contain "roll-ups" of all hotfixes applied to the binaries that the GDR works on. Meaning, if the GDR is to fix an issue in ASP.NET, it will contain *all* previous QFEs made for the ASP.NET assemblies and files it updates.

    Service Packs: These are typically roll-ups of multiple GDRs. Service packs reset the support clock for customers, which is why we don't try and release them too frequently (unless really needed). Specifically, you only get support for the current SP and the SP-1 version - so doing SPs every 6 months ends up upsetting large companies who feel like they are forced to roll out new SPs whether they need them or not just to make sure they can get support.

    With the .NET Framework we've gone with the model of releasing regular GDRs that are roll-ups of patches so that: 1) everyone can get the fixes (without calling support), and 2) it doesn't reset the servicing clock for enterprises. We haven't had that many runtime bugs reported for .NET 2.0, and so haven't had many complaints with this approach. We'll be releasing a SP later this year that then rolls-up everything as well.

    Hope this helps explain things better,

    Scott

    P.S. If there is a specific bug you are ever blocked on send me mail and I can either get you a patch, or let you know the schedule of when a fix might be in the next GDR.

  • Thanks Scott for replying :)

    I understand about the QFE's, but I don't get the QDR's. Where can I download those? And where can I point my customers to when a bug in .NET is fixed in a given QDR? When I go to the .NET 2.0 download page at msdn:
    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa731542.aspx
    I don't see any QDR's. Also on windows update no QDR's.

    About the service packs: So because some 'large' corporations get frightened for no valid reason the rest of the world simply has to suffer? It's been more than 1.5 years since .NET 2.0 has been released, so I think if releasing a service pack is still upsetting these people, they have a different problem.

    About the bugs: EVERY bug reported in Connect should be fixed or if it's a really silly detail, perhaps ignored, but a lot of issues are simply closed with 'by design' (who designed it in such a way that it broke?) or 'resolved won't fix', often without a reason given.

    There's an issue in the datagridview which makes the design time view go bezerk (reproducable easily with datasets as well). This is in the .NET framework (there are many more issues in winforms alone, like visual inheritance not working etc. etc.). I reported that more than a year ago. They won't fix it for Orcas. Huh? Do I have to be IBM to get something fixed first?

    About reporting bugs directly to you: I appreciate the offer, but that's not the point: for EVERY one of your customers the same standards should apply: they should be able to report a bug easily, and the bug should either be fixed PRONTO, OR if the bugfix will cause breaking of code, the fix should be postponed but _THAT_ should be the reason that's told to the customer.

    Now some group of gatekeepers is closing any bugreports with bogus reasons like 'not enoug resources' ... if the biggest, richest software company on the planet can't free / gather enough resources to fix silly bugs in their work, how should smaller ISVs ever be able to fix bugs?

    Also: "not enough time, not enough resources" makes it the customer's problem all of a sudden, which is the world upside-down. A defect in YOUR work is YOUR responsibility. It shouldn't matter who reports that defect, the defect should be fixed.

    The customers of your work are developers themselves. They understand what a bug is and that people make mistakes. I have 0.0 problems with running into a bug in a piece of software I use, HOWEVER it has to be fixed easily and quickly for me so I can move on. If that's NOT the case (and trust me, how MS handles it today is beyond any definition of easy and quickly), the bug WILL hurt me and my work and in the end my company.

    For example the datagridview bug. I'm pretty tired of explaining to customers that it's not my code which causes this but MS' code. It's an example of how Microsoft's current policy fails in full effect. I would have liked to post the id's of the issue here, but I can't connect to Connect at the moment, because the site is unreachable.

  • I was just searching "when net framwork SP1" in google and walla, I end up in the Frans connect report, Im very glad that you talk laud and that the greatest people at MS hear you now =)

    I think that the point here is:

    MS Said: If you "found" a bug you can request it or download it.

    Communiity said: When my code fails.. how I know if it is a problem of my code of from .NET ??
    So why we must waste hours in google or reviewing our code, if un another world we can download a SP1 and never found this bugs ??

    I think that this is more the point, thaks to some work of bryan harry we have now the option to get the list of the bugs, because before it we simply dont know when to begin the search.

    Thanks Frans for this rant, and to Scott for be so pasionate and keep the hope of the community

    Thanks to both !!

Comments have been disabled for this content.