Microsoft last month released a bug report that its enterprise file replication won’t work correctly during the month of December. At what point do you say “this is just plain stupid?”

To be fair, the problem isn’t with enterprise file replication itself, but with the reporting tools that tell you how its doing. However in a product which companies pay $1,500 for, this is a fairly idiotic bug. And while there is a patch which fixes the problem, you’ll have to reboot your high-end file servers to install it — entirely defeating the purpose of having high-end file servers.

Of course, how did they find a problem in November that only happens in December? :)

As my co-worker said, “This is one of the dumbest bugs I ever heard of.” While this is a doozy even for Microsoft, it does play right into the common belief that Microsoft doesn’t have a handle on quality control. Most likely, this problem originates from a developer using “<" instead of "<=." The big problem with this is that Microsoft goes around claiming that they have a great code review process -- obviously not.

How can we be expected to trust Microsoft’s security and encryption services (not to mention providing credit card information to their Passport web site) when their developers don’t even know how many months there are in the year? This is especially troubling as with Windows Vista coming out soon … an entire new (read: untested) codebase. While some may be heartened that Microsoft seems to put the same level of quality control in their enterprise products as they do in their consumer products, it may actually be a detriment.

Score another point for Open Source.