Disclaimer:
I do not work for Mandrake. I do have twenty years of developer experience
as a consultant. Usually as a fireman (not called in 'til there was a "fire
to put out" (emergency) <ggg>).
>
> In a beta situation, the ground rules requite that a new version for
> beta test cannot be issued until all known problems have been verified as
> corrected by the alpha test. I made this problem known to you some time
> ago, so of course it was made known to the developer, so becoming a
> monitored candidate for alpha test.
>
Not any place I've worked at for the last 20 years. Betas are released on a
regular schedule. They incorporate any bug fixes placed into the code
repository since the last release. If it was done the way you suggest, beta
testing would take much longer. The only two faults I see with Mandrake is
failure to acknowledge all bug reports and failure to maintain a status
database of known bugs accessible to the beta testers.
>
> Again, how could such an obvious oversight ever have got past Mandrake's
> alpha testing?
>
Assuming Mandrake performs beta testing like every place I've worked:
It got past the in-house code busters because it was not reported to them as
being fixed yet. They only try to bust stuff that is supposed to be
working. There's no point in trying to bust code known to be broken.
Again, a new beta release does not mean every bug has been fixed since the
previous release.
>
> This is a heinous waste of beta testers' time, and fairly
> constitutes emotional abuse inflicted on beta testers who have trusted
> MandrakeSoft to be doing a proper job.
>
Mandrake is doing a proper job as far as a beta release goes (with the two
exceptions I noted about acknowledgment of bug reports and an accessible
status list of bugs). If you need stable code, you should be using a
production release, not beta.
>
> The function of a beta test is to
> submit the product to externel users with a new perspective on
> needs and requirements which viewpoint is not available at the
> developer level.
>
NO!!! That need is met completely by users' comments on the production
releases. Also note, when code is released into beta testing, a features
freeze is generally implemented. Any such comments would not be worked upon
until after the production release following the successful completion of
the beta test unless it was a necessary part of a bug fix.
The purpose of a beta test series is to catch bugs that even the in-house
code busters cannot catch prior to production release. Due to the infinite
possible varieties of installations (both hardware and software), it is not
feasible for the in-house code busters to catch everything.
