Recently, someone (Brion Webster maybe? Dennis ) said in a newsgroup that software has the most relaxed relationship with respect to it's quality, and if other products has so much defects and the manufacturer denied to fix errors without additional costs to the consumer, it'll be returned.

Imagine your mother / wife / husband / neighbour  / butler / cook (abbreviated as mwhnbc subsequently) cooked a meal for you to eat.

If you're a breadwinner, you probably gave some money to your mwhnbc so that he/she can buy the ingredients to prepare for your meal. Now, if the food is cooked lousily, do you let your mwhnbc know, or do you keep quiet?

If you keep quiet, the quality of the food never improves, and he/she doesn't know that the quality of the food is bad, and doesn't improve upon it.

If you think the food is bad, and decides never to eat food prepared by him/her again (and feels indignant that you paid a sh*tload of money to get lousy food), then the money you've given him/her to prepare the food has gone down the drain. If you decide to keep quiet, and eat elsewhere, the taste/quality of the food may not be to your liking. Eventually, you have to stop somewhere, and give feedback on the taste/quality of the food so that eventually, the taste/quality of the food is prepared to your liking.

I think, that is where the relationship of software and food is. It's like food cooked by your mwhnbc.

UPDATE: As for service packs / hotfixes, you've already eaten your plate of food halfway, would you like it re-prepared, or do you want a new plate of food? ;o)