Any update on this? I'm currently using the VMWare Fusion trial and there's no way I'll purchase when there's a silent data corruption bug like this. I find it disconcerting that a data integrity bug like this is so low on the priority list...
I am not sure why you would say or assume you know everything about our priority lists. Do you know what the priority list is? Or anything about the internal workings, resource scheduling and outstanding bugs/issues and new features of VMware Fusion or even just the Shared Folder feature itself. Or even the number of Fusion/WS users who would be affected and run into this issue against other outstanding issues with say, non-Linux VMs, like Windows?
This bug has been around an awful long time as it stands and it is only apparent when you have read and write handles open to the same file at the same time.
(Thus you will not see any corruption issues unless you have some applications/environment where you actively do this, like Dominic has. Also why our testing and quality missed this issue in the first place.)
Anyway, for those who do care, this bug has several issues with this data corruption and I have fixed some of these and checked them in. However, as there often is with issues like this, there is not one simple fix that is all encompassing. Likewise, there are some different dependencies on which Linux OS version you run, as the VFS layer has changed with every single release. I am currently testing three different Linux kernel versions running in VMs against three different host OS's: Windows 7, OS X 10.8.4 and Ubuntu 12.10.
Furthermore, I have Dominic's test application and it passes all the time. However, beyond that, there is still a random issue going on which occasionally is hit. I am still trying to track this down and fix it. When that is done, I can update here and safely state that this issue has completely been addressed.
This has been my highest priority bug and I have already spent quite a lot of time on it. We treat any data corruption of files as a very serious issue, and none have been discovered with any version of Windows OS VMs. So clearly your assumptions are wrong and ill-conceived.
Steve