1. The Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computerized methods for testing and tracking and, more particularly, to novel systems and methods for testing, tracking, and correcting errors due to software or hardware.
2. Background
Product development cycles have become shorter and shorter. More of the responsibility for testing and “debugging” products falls to the actual beta testers or alpha testers. Nevertheless, products are continuing their development cycle well into their marketing bases.
For example, software is often released for public purchase before the known errors from beta testing have been cured. Hardware is often likewise premature, and more difficult to correct. Alternatively, beta testing may be inadequate, leaving various problems extant within either hardware, software, or a combination thereof.
Purchasers are often left with a need for identification and cure of errors in commercially available software and hardware. In some instances, product manufacturers and suppliers actively solicit comments, improvements, detection and identification of errors, and the like. In other situations, manufacturers and marketers of products are not so forthcoming.
For example, occasionally, problems are comparatively esoteric, and may occur only in a few rare conditions or instances. Nevertheless, some errors occur with sufficient regularity as to seriously encumber users unaware of the existence of such product flaws.
In recent years, computer and software manufacturers have been repeatedly surprised, even amazed, at the groundswell of opposition to products that are not adequately tested, supported, corrected, recalled, or otherwise identified as having correctable flaws.
Software, in particular, has arrived at a new threshold of pain for purchasers and users. Never since the advent of government agencies for consumer protection against fraud, product failure, product inadequacy, manufacturer non-responsiveness, and the like, have so many dollars of product value been subject to such massive amounts of owner and operator time in order to obtain the purported benefits of the products.
Some manufacturers are swift to seek out and post notification of errors existing in their products. Typically, errors are identified, with associated patches for correcting the errors. In some cases, products are recalled. With the advent of the world wide web, a host of users may provide a corresponding host of error corrections, all freely available to users interested in improving the performance or reliability of a purchased software or hardware product in the computer industry.
Historically, a manufacturer or other purveyor of a computer-related product may face a dilemma with respect to certain product flaws. To the extent that an error, built into or programmed into a computer-related product, is comparatively esoteric and unlikely to cause problems for the majority of users, a manufacturer or developer may prefer to ignore it. To the extent that such a flaw or error is ubiquitous and likely to cause pervasive and obvious problems, a manufacturer may prefer to cure the problem. Similarly, to the extent that a problem is likely to cause a comparatively small disruption of promised service, a manufacturer may choose to ignore it. Alternatively, to the extent that a problem is likely to cause serious economic damages to a commercial or industrial user of a software product or physical damage to persons or property as a direct result of the failure of a computer-based product, a manufacturer will take appropriate steps to find a correction to the problem, announce the presence of the flaw and the availability of a corrective measure, and seek to bring all copies of the product into compliance with a corrected version thereof.
Nevertheless, product improvement is largely a matter of motivation. Motivation may arise from personal interest, individual or enterprise-wide frustration, desirability of a result, previous experiences and expectations, and the like. In current process for product improvement, little incentive exists to provide for skilled third parties to improve marketed products. By the same token, manufacturers, whether large or small, may have limited motivation, resources, or the like to locate and correct errors. In fact, a certain motivation may exist to not seek out errors, nor to highlight them, nor even to repair them, in many instances.
What is needed is a mechanism, whereby software and hardware products related to computer systems may be improved profitably by third parties. Likewise, what is needed is an apparatus and method for consistently providing the necessary resources for testing, correction, notification, and product redistribution for products and upgrades related to computer-related based products, whether software or hardware.