“JUST ONE day before the launch of its Windows 2000 operating
system, Microsoft is disputing suggestions in a leaked company memo
that the product contains 63,000 bugs….”
“An excerpt from the memo reads in part, “Our customers do not
want us to sell them products with over 63,000 potential defects.
They want those defects corrected. How many of you would spend $500
on a piece of software with over 63,000 potential known
defects?”
” White insisted that the Windows 2000 code has been extensively
vetted by 750,000 beta testers and security analysts for potential
bugs and asserted that “the claims are taken out of context and
completely inaccurate.”
“According to White, the memo was intended as a
“motivational statement” for the Windows development team,
based on an automated scan of the source code with a tool called
Prefix. He said the analysis flagged code in Windows 2000 that
could be made more efficient in the next release, detected false
positives, and analyzed 10 million lines of test code that weren’t
included in the release.”