Well said - and I agree whole heartedly! Here, here!
Thx, R.Fox On Sun, 2002-03-17 at 11:20, Jeff Dickey wrote: > Warly, > > Thanks for clarifying this. It should have been blindingly obvious to > anyone with any experience in software production (myself included) that > distribution and so on depends on fixed dates communicated well in advance. > In that regard, any development, open source or proprietary, has to deal > with the realities of the market. > > Of course we need deadlines; and nobody (should) doubt the level of effort > that's going into getting 8.2 out the door. Perhaps what ought to be looked > at for 9.0 is not so much a reworking of the development model, but, rather, > a more conspicuous and complete articulation of it. I suspect that many of > the people commenting on various aspects of the distro have development > experience limited to either commercial development or, at best, single, > smaller Open Source projects that have greater immediate control over their > own schedule. There is a level of assumption present, fed by comments from > the public face of Mandrake (you) like "No final until all bugs are squashed > ;)" -- that leads people to lose sight of the fact that Mandrake is, in fact > a commercial venture that has to ship product (8.2) on or very closely > about a fixed date in order to keep food on the table. > > When the schedule is fixed, stakeholders (e.g., Cooker folk, testers) need > to know. When outside people are testing, it helps to have some idea what > priorities are, and those are expected to get tighter as we progress from > Beta 1 through Beta N to RC1 to RC M. It is my impression that what has > raised a lot of people's blood pressure on the list is not konwing what the > real priorities and selection criteria are. If we do indeed have a fixed > date, a (relatively) fixed amount of resources that we can allocate to > fixing problems, and a non-fixed feature/defect matrix, it's obvious that > features are not going to ship and/or defects are not going to get fixed > before the ship date. That's life in commercial development; anybody who > says "But WhizBang-0.9.9 just shipped - can we include that too?" - is > cordially invited to patch the distro with WB, build and fully > regression-test the entire distro, and describe what other changes ripple > out - without affecting others' work or delivery schedules. It can't be > done, folks - what CAN be done is better communication. > > Ship dates should be articulated. Defect-classification and -prioritization > should be communicated, probably through this list and/or Mandrake Expert. > It would be nice to see basic statistics like defect open and close counts > and rates, mean time to repair for various categories and priorities of > defects, and so on. There's no obvious communication of prioritization or > severity at all in Mandrake Expert - THAT needs to be fixed for 9.0, and all > this is basic statistics that any self-respecting defect- or > problem-reporting system should handle out of the box. > > Mandrake has a great resource here - the great volunteer army of testers and > users willing to test and poke and prod the software on a far greater > variety of systems and configurations than Mandrake could ever have direct > control of; but it will take some improvements in communication and process > to make truly effective use of them. If we are to make Linux a more credible > alternative to Windows - and Mandrake the preeminent Linux on the desktop. > > How can we help? > > Jeff Dickey > Seven Sigma Software and Services > Phone: +1 661 588 2917 > Phone: +1 425 885 6280 > Pager: +1 800 931 4233 > Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (preferred) > Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Home page (with r�sum�): http://www.seven-sigma.com/ > PGP key fingerprint: 6BAC 8806 2480 BC1B 0388 2521 CB5B 552F > -------Original Message------- > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Date: Sunday, March 17, 2002 01:12:46 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [Cooker] Mandrake way of life > > Mandrake Linux is based on a fixed date releasing due to market > constraints (distributor/supplier schedules). As a consequence the > release date was scheduled 3 months ago. On this date we have a > very little margin of 2 or 3 days, but not more. > > So the datum is: "release date is March the 15th". > > Now we need to do it in this timeframe (and we are the 17th), and > we have no other choice. > > In a few days 8.2 updates will be released, and them you will have > the real stable and polished distro you want. > > Debian has no real realease date, as a consequence doing a stable > release is just a piece of cake, anybody can do it. > > Maybe our model is not good. > > Thinking of a better model, I am not sure what I could choose. No > deadline means no hurry, and "if the last moments didn't exist, > nothing good would be done". > > Moreover if we wait too much, new versions of nearly all the tools in > the distro will be released, and their respective authors will not > care anymore fixing bugs in the old version we would have included. > > I do think that our model is not so bad, and that we are reaching a > good compromise between cutting edge and stability, but /this/ > compromise _is needed_. > > -- > Warly > > .
