Years ago I worked as a game tester in one of Infogrames' QA departments. I worked on a ton of games in my time, and they were all released while there was still a long list of bugs remaining to be fixed. And, in every case, the company was clearly aware of the problems and made a conscious decision to ignore them. I don't know about other types of software, but commercial games absolutely are abandoned rather than finished.
On a side note: it always makes me smile when a publisher releases a statement saying something like "we are working hard on a patch to fix the serious issues that have been discovered since the release of our game". Discovered since the game was released? Ha. Yeah right.
On a side note: it always makes me smile when a publisher releases a statement saying something like "we are working hard on a patch to fix the serious issues that have been discovered since the release of our game". Discovered since the game was released? Ha. Yeah right.