You can read it online here:
A Plea to Software Vendors from Sysadmins - 10 Do's and Don'ts
ACM Queue approached me a year ago and asked for suggestions on how to make Queue magazine more appealing to system administrators. As part of the process I helped wrangle a number of sysadmins to contribute articles. Some were in the previous issue and you'll see more in coming months. Of course, I couldn't help but write one myself :-).
ACM Queue magazine is published online, but they cross-publish articles into Communications of the ACM (printed edition), which is a magazine I respect and highly recommend. It isn't just for computer scientists!
I welcome your comments on the new article!
Update: The article has been mentioned on Slashdot! If you are visiting my site after seeing this on Slashdot, welcome! Please subscribe to my RSS feed!
Update 2: Check http://www.TomOnTime.com next week... I'll have a new batch of videos up!
Great post. I think if software makers own system administrators had to user their software maybe, just maybe, they would follow most of your advice.
The bad software always seems like the people that wrote it don't actually have to use it in a day to day bases. If they did use it, quality would be far better.