Software release games (Q1584023)

The authors deal with the problem of software release in a two-player game setting as introduced by \textit{P. Zeephongsekul} and \textit{C. Chiera} [J. Appl. Probab. 32, 470-481 (1995; Zbl 0829.90149) and J. Optimization Theory Appl. 91, 215-233 (1996; Zbl 0871.90151)]. Although the authors praise the Zeephongsekul-Chiera approach and wish that ``the seminal works of [Zeephongsekul and Chiera] \dots{} should have an impact on actual software development management (p.~326)'', they explicitly criticize the results of Zeephongsekul and Chiera: They claim that (i) the Zeephangsekul-Chiera solution ``is optimal only for a special case (p.~327)'' and call this a ``fatal problem (ibd.)'', and (ii) that the Zeephangsekul-Chiera solution is computationally complex (p.~327 and Remark 2.3; note that Remark 2.3 does not contain an actual computation of the complexity and there are no formal complexity computations for the Dohi-Teraoka-Osaki solution as well (Remark 3.1)). The authors give a different solution for the ``silent-type'' game (Section 3), and two solutions for different noisy games (Sections 4.1 \& 4.2). Concludingly, they compare their solutions to the Zeephangsekul-Chiera solution in one particular numerical example (Section 5).