“Based on an interview with one of the people that first
discovered the recent “51 IP” bug in Windows 2000, and email
discussions with various people at Microsoft Corporation, it has
become clear that the company knew about this bug before the
release of Windows 2000, did nothing to fix it, and then ignored
customer complaints when they began occurring in late March.
What’s amazing here, of course, isn’t the bug
itself–which requires a fairly uncommon set up, to be
sure–but Microsoft’s response to the customers that
complained, some of whom are ISPs and other large Windows
accounts. But this bug is most likely to affect small
companies, a market that Microsoft has historically championed. In
this case, it’s clear that the company has let them down.”
“”The problem isn’t the bug–the product’s only a few months
old–this kind of thing is going to happen. I understand that,”
says Brian Bergin, the president of Terabyte Computers, a Microsoft
Solution Provider. “The problem is the response from Microsoft.
It’s really about the way the bug was handled. This could have been
potentially devastating. If you don’t [run into this bug], Windows
2000 Server is fine. If there’s a limitation here no one found,
what other limitations are we going to find? But Microsoft was
aware of this. This is negligence on their part: They knew about
this problem and didn’t fix it.””