3rd Party compatibility

[John Darrington]

I don't know if we want to spend a lot of time on this, but I thought I'd
ask the question anyway:

There's a 3rd party product to generate spss system files at 
http://spss.pmstation.com and there's an example file for download.

I tried to load it using PSPP 
error: corrupt system file: /home/res/jmd/test.sav: Number of elements per
        case (-1) is not between 1 and 134217727.

Now this would seem to be their problem and not ours; they really have asked 
for -1 elements per case.  On the other hand, spss v12 reads this file OK 
(somehow it guesses there are 4 variables).

So the question is:  Should we

a) emulate SPSS's ability to read this faulty system file (for the 
   sake of 'compatibility')?

b) prefer 'correctness' and leave these guys to fix their own buggy 
   (and proprietary) product?

J'

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