From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Mar 21 10:49:50 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from freefall.freebsd.org (freefall.FreeBSD.ORG [204.216.27.21]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BE3FB37BBC2; Tue, 21 Mar 2000 10:49:45 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kris@FreeBSD.org) Received: from localhost (kris@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.9.3/8.9.2) with ESMTP id KAA32237; Tue, 21 Mar 2000 10:49:45 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kris@FreeBSD.org) X-Authentication-Warning: freefall.freebsd.org: kris owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 10:49:45 -0800 (PST) From: Kris Kennaway To: David Murphy Cc: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Voxware is toast. Get used to it. (Re: Suggestions for improving newpcm performance?) In-Reply-To: <20000321141055.E5367@enigma.redbrick.dcu.ie> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, 21 Mar 2000, David Murphy wrote: > Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of commercial unix > OSes, Sun for example, and I use this example because I'm familiar > with them, put out an Early Access version of Solaris 8 some months > before formally releasing Solaris 8. Effectively, this is the same > timescale FreeBSD is going to run on, but the early access version is > labelled -RELEASE. No, the early-access version is labelled 4.0-RC1. If you're not willing to jump on board during the testing phase when we say "okay, we think this is pretty much ready unless anyone finds bugs in the next 30 days (which turned into over 2 months in the end)", then don't complain when 4.0 is released and you find a bug that could have been fixed earlier. It's as simple as that - if there are bugs we don't get alerted about during the publicized "prerelease" cycle (and thanks to all those who *did* jump on board and help us improve the quality of 4.0!), then they'll have to be fixed post-release. > As opposed to what? People staying away from x.0-RELEASE in droves, > because they find out it's a beta, AFTER they've been confused by > the naming policy? As others have pointed out, it's not a "beta" - but it *is* new technology which must be expected to have some bugs. This is the case *all over the computer industry* - every dot-zero release has some level of bugginess, because by definition the dot-zero means it's got a lot of new code in it, and humans are bad programmers. Cisco x.0 releases are buggy. Solaris 2.0 was extremely buggy. Windows NT 4.0 was extremely buggy (they're still fixing serious bugs in it after 5 years in the field) Windows 2000 is extremely buggy, and Microsoft rolled out one of the most extensive beta testing programs ever - Windows 2000 was in beta for over a year! If you don't understand this reality, then you've either been conned by the marketing apparati of big companies into thinking that dot-zero releases only contain wonderful new features that you really need, or you don't understand this game we're in all that well. Perhaps if we ran multimedia ads across the world and charged people exorbitant license fees for the upgrade then they'd be happier. Kris ---- In God we Trust -- all others must submit an X.509 certificate. -- Charles Forsythe To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message