From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Sep 8 03:31:18 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 37FEC16A4C0 for ; Mon, 8 Sep 2003 03:31:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hannibal.servitor.co.uk (hannibal.servitor.co.uk [195.188.15.48]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1AB6F43FBF for ; Mon, 8 Sep 2003 03:31:17 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from paul@iconoplex.co.uk) Received: from hannibal.servitor.co.uk ([195.188.15.48] helo=iconoplex.co.uk) by hannibal.servitor.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.14) id 19wJM3-000Giz-VW; Mon, 08 Sep 2003 11:34:44 +0100 Message-ID: <3F5C5A71.6020204@iconoplex.co.uk> Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 11:31:13 +0100 From: Paul Robinson User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Gary W. Swearingen" References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: "Jason C. Wells" cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The Old Way Was Better X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 10:31:18 -0000 Gary W. Swearingen wrote: >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. > I agree except you will NOT recruit testers by making releases in this way. You will make enemies. If something is named a -RELEASE, I and the rest of the planet expect it to be production ready code, capable of going into a live environment and the kind of software that I should be able to buy in a shrink-wrapped box. If it is NOT production ready, it should be named as such. It should have a -BETA in the name. It should DEFINITELY not be named a -RELEASE. I know the amount of work that's gone into 5.x, and I know that there is a need for testers. What has happened with 5.x though is an absolute travesty. I know a lot of people will never, ever trust the FreeBSD release engineers again - they will refuse to run code released as a -RELEASE until they've heard it's safe. In effect, we've lost "customers". We've lost potential testers. We've lost new users, potential developers and people prepared to throw money at the project. We've lost a lot, because we -RELEASE'ed something before it was release-ready. A policy on naming beta code as beta code is required. Everybody here is aware of the fact that 5.x shouldn't be rolled out onto the payroll system just yet, but what does that say about the project as a whole when it's named as a -RELEASE, to somebody coming over to FreeBSD from the dark side? >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. > Keeping the betas named as betas would be fine. 5.0-BETA-1 should have been the name for 5.0-RELEASE. Then 5.0-BETA-2 for 5.1-RELEASE, 5.0-BETA-3 for 5.2-RELEASE, then 5.0-BETA-4, 5.0-BETA-5, etc. then when the code is READY for a production environment and everybody agrees it rocks, we finally get to 5.0-RELEASE Obviously, this can't be done on the 5.x branch now, but in the future... -- Paul Robinson