[paulcam]

I think you might be misinterpreting the first post you linked. He's not bragging about how complicated it is. He's also not complaining about how tricky it is. There are always things in the Windows org that could use improvement (otherwise, I'd be out of a job). However, the vast majority of processes exist to fulfill requirements that very few software projects have to deal with.

Consider that Windows ships in over a hundred languages to hundreds of millions of people. I'm not sure how many languages Linux ships in (I'd bet quite a few), but Linux contributors don't have to worry about getting arrested for drawing map lines wrong: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alexbarn/archive/2004/08/20/217602.a...

Do we ship software without testing? No. Do we ship software that isn't globalized? No. Do we just hack something together, check it in, and call it a day? No. These aren't the kinds of practices that lead to a stable platform.

Mistakes get made (at all levels of the management chain), but they tend to be the exception in my experience.