Date: Sun, 07 Sep 2003 21:49:09 -0700 From: underway@comcast.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: "Jason C. Wells" <jcw@highperformance.net> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The Old Way Was Better Message-ID: <cjwucjj35m.ucj@mail.comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.44.0309071042420.76263-100000@s1.stradamotorsports.com> (Jason C. Wells's message of "Sun, 7 Sep 2003 11:10:50 -0700 (PDT)") References: <Pine.BSF.4.44.0309071042420.76263-100000@s1.stradamotorsports.com>
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"Jason C. Wells" <jcw@highperformance.net> writes: > Rather than releasing development code and making big warnings, just > _recruit_ more testers. That is what was needed in accordance with the > early adopter's guide. This is the most direct path to the desired > outcome. You'll recruit more testers by making releases and you'll recruit even more by naming the releases well. What "well" is is the problem, because name choices have other effects too. > Those who are inclined to test will test. Those who are not inclined to > test (me, until I got the OpenAFS bug) will not. That's just not true, at least if normal users who report bugs are counted as testers, as they should be. BTW, please tell me a little about OpenAFS. Didn't CMU abandon its copyrights on AFS so it's in the public domain? If so, OpenAFS is a funny name. Under what license is the new work being done? Is the project working on the GUI libraries? Are they usable for normal applications? > The old way was better. The only thing I know about the old way is what I read at http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/5-roadmap/index.html and were the old way sounds worse. Unless there's a REAL old way where beta releases carry beta-type names. As I indicated above, it's necessary to make a few beta releases and the only question is what they should have been named. They probably should have been named "NickName #" or "5.pre0.#" or (in keeping with my last message) with a "4.*-beta" name, but "5.#" wasn't much worse as long as they were described as well as they were. The names that were used surely got the code tested better than other names would have, and that might be worth the (minor?) harm it's doing to FreeBSD's reputation. There would also have been some harm caused by delaying 5.0 a second year. And delaying 5.0 another year would have caused some morale problems with the developers too. As it is, as this thread shows, there are many people quite happy using 5.x in non-test situations. While 5.0 (I should say X11 on 5.0) kept hanging up on my system, 5.1 has been working fine as my sole desktop OS. (I do still have 4.8 around, but it looks like I won't need it.)
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