On Aug 31, 2005, at 9:27 AM, Ralph Goers wrote:
My opinion is that a community that releases software that it won't stand behind has a significant problem.
"Won't stand behind" seems like too strong/loaded of a characterization for this CForms thing. Support for CForms has been great.
Here's what I think "stable" means, can somebody please confirm/correct this?:
"X is stable" entails that:
(1) Support for X will not be unduly removed, i.e. without going through the deprecation cycle. "Support" entails that product releases will include X, and that the product will not be released with changes that are known to break X.
(2) All future changes to X's APIs will be backward-compatible.
Your position is that CForms is "good enough", and we should just mark it as "stable" and have done with it. Because for you, any "good enough" CForms is better than no CForms, which is what you get as long as it's still "unstable", thanks to your employer's bull-headed, inflexible policy.
But for my part... I do not want to be stuck with a "better than none" CForms forever. I want CForms to be right eventually, and I don't want anything closing the door to that. There are still things that need to be done to get it there. And until then, I get to use an "almost right" CForms, because I don't have anybody telling me what I can and can't use.
I certainly do not think that saying "we still have more work to do before we promise that there will never be a backwards-incompatible API change" constitutes "not standing behind" our product. Quite the contrary, I think it represents a greater commitment than just "close the lid and flush" :-/
cheers,
—ml—
