[AA6YQ]

I develop and support DXLab, a suite of interoperating, free (but not open-source) applications for the worldwide amateur radio community; these applications continuously populate databases with realtime information, and interact with many other applications and physical devices (radios, antenna rotators) via serial ports, DDE, UDP, and TCP links. Since the first public release 22 years ago, my policy has been "all reported defects are corrected within 24 hours". Interaction with the user community is direct - via an online group. I typically make public releases bearing new functionality 2-3 times per month.

This policy's results have been excellent: users are focused on learning to better exploit the applications and suggesting new functionality rather than complaining about long-deferred defect repairs; even minor, easily worked-around defects create a negative user community mindset that can snowball. The absence of defects increases user confidence, and reduces user-perceived complexity.