Having been on both ends of this (developer and user), I've seen all kinds of reasons that bug reports drop off, after the first couple years, that have nothing to do with software quality improving. A few actual examples I've seen:
- I reported 5 bugs, and they were all ignored, so I'm not going to report any more now. It'd just be a waste of my time.
- I reported a bug, and in the process of fixing that, the developer broke something else even worse. (In one case, it turned a "delete some" button into a "delete all" button which caused a minor catastrophe for all users.) Now I want the developer to not touch anything. I know what little bugs exist in the system, and I've come up with my own ways to work around them, thank you very much.
- As a consequence of some other bug fix, it came to light that the developer has no backups. (I don't have sufficient pull to fix that underlying problem.) I want the developer to not touch anything.
- The users aren't the buyers, and it's easy for the buyers to know where to report bugs, but that information is hidden from the users. As a result, all of the bugs that cropped up during demos (for or by C-level execs and VPs) are fixed, but nothing beyond that.
- We brought on new users, and they don't know that the software is custom built (2 months ago!), so they don't know it's possible to file bug reports. Or they don't know where to report them. Or they're afraid it's going to be onerous. Whatever the reason, they think this program has always been around and can't be changed.
- Maybe the process really is onerous. One company has gotten increasingly naggy about all bug reports including a 1/2GB blob of logs and other PII that takes several minutes to generate. Even when I just want to report "there's no way to do X, and there should be a way to do X", I get nagged 3 or 4 times to include this diagnostic blob, and it's implied that my bug won't get much attention without one. I only rarely report bugs to that company these days.
- Since the early days of a popular website, the keyboard shortcuts were supremely annoying. In the interests of being supportive of that great new venture, I only reported issues which caused the system to be completely unusable. Later, when the major issues had been ironed out and people did report that stealing and remapping all the standard OS text editing keys was maybe not the nicest thing to do, we were told the system was 3 years old already and by now someone else "would surely complain if it was an annoying problem".
In other words, everyone from users to developers comes to depend on the status quo. The softness of software is a benefit during initial development, but mostly just a liability later. We value the status quo even more than quality.
- I reported 5 bugs, and they were all ignored, so I'm not going to report any more now. It'd just be a waste of my time.
- I reported a bug, and in the process of fixing that, the developer broke something else even worse. (In one case, it turned a "delete some" button into a "delete all" button which caused a minor catastrophe for all users.) Now I want the developer to not touch anything. I know what little bugs exist in the system, and I've come up with my own ways to work around them, thank you very much.
- As a consequence of some other bug fix, it came to light that the developer has no backups. (I don't have sufficient pull to fix that underlying problem.) I want the developer to not touch anything.
- The users aren't the buyers, and it's easy for the buyers to know where to report bugs, but that information is hidden from the users. As a result, all of the bugs that cropped up during demos (for or by C-level execs and VPs) are fixed, but nothing beyond that.
- We brought on new users, and they don't know that the software is custom built (2 months ago!), so they don't know it's possible to file bug reports. Or they don't know where to report them. Or they're afraid it's going to be onerous. Whatever the reason, they think this program has always been around and can't be changed.
- Maybe the process really is onerous. One company has gotten increasingly naggy about all bug reports including a 1/2GB blob of logs and other PII that takes several minutes to generate. Even when I just want to report "there's no way to do X, and there should be a way to do X", I get nagged 3 or 4 times to include this diagnostic blob, and it's implied that my bug won't get much attention without one. I only rarely report bugs to that company these days.
- Since the early days of a popular website, the keyboard shortcuts were supremely annoying. In the interests of being supportive of that great new venture, I only reported issues which caused the system to be completely unusable. Later, when the major issues had been ironed out and people did report that stealing and remapping all the standard OS text editing keys was maybe not the nicest thing to do, we were told the system was 3 years old already and by now someone else "would surely complain if it was an annoying problem".
In other words, everyone from users to developers comes to depend on the status quo. The softness of software is a benefit during initial development, but mostly just a liability later. We value the status quo even more than quality.