Releasing Software

Charles Miller has some really insightful thoughts on releasing software. Read the whole thing; this summary really does sum it up:

Anyway, as I was saying in the first paragraph, I used to think that the hardest thing a software project had to do was make the painful cut of features and bugs for 1.0. It turns out I was wrong. The hardest thing to do is, in fact, to make the cut for 1.1. The moment you release 1.0, you start getting these incredible things called users, who find all those bugs you never turned up during development, and who make really cool suggestions for things you could add.

Everyone who has ever released software that gets used learns this one the hard way...