On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 11:09 AM, Rajith Attapattu <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi All, > > Based on the questions asked on our user list and feedback from customers > etc.. it seems that we have plenty of room to improve when it comes to ease > of use and documentation. > Ease of use is one that directly impacts the first impression about any new > product. > > I firmly believe this is something that needs to be one of the top > priorities (if not the top most) for our next release. > Perhaps it's time for us to take a step back and see if, > > 1) Have we packaged our products in a way that is useful for our target > users ? > Given that we have products written in multiple languages and targetted at different Operating systems perhaps pre-compiled individual components might not be the most optimal. Therefore downloading individual components doesn't really make sense as you need brokers, clients, examples and management tools, documentation to get a good all round experience. Instead we should probably ship a single source tree with some sort of script that will build the brokers, clients, examples and management tools and install the binaries to a particular location. Easier said than done, but I believe several folks have expressed their desire about taking this direction. > 2) How easy is it for folks to download an install our products ? > If we can achieve the above, I think it will go a long way in achieving this goal. > 3) How easy is it for people to run the examples and get it going? > Again, if we can get the above going, then it makes it very easy for folks to run the examples, preferably against both brokers. > 4) Have we organized our documentation properly? > I think we are on the right direction here. The new website and the svn based documentation is a big improvement. We just need to ensure we continue to do so. > 5) Have we got enough documentation to cover atleast the basic aspects? > I think we do this to a reasonable extent with the new "programming with apache qpid" document. However there are some gaps that exist and we need to ensure we fill them. > 6) Have we got enough documentation to cover the topics that people are > interested once they get the basics going? > I think the new documentation structure lacks this kinda of documentation. > 7) Are we releasing frequently enough for users to rely on us to ensure > that critical bugs are fixed ? > No ! - ThankfullyJustin has volunteered some time (as per his email to the list) to get frequent releases. At the minimum we need to do two major releases and two minor releases per year. > 8) Do we as a project have a process that defines how we handle a critical > issue after a release ? > I don't believe we have such a process at all. We need to first get into the habit of getting frequent releases and then see how we can do this sort of emergency fixes. > I am positive that our community (both developers and end users) has a lot > of good ideas. > I am quite keen on hearing suggestions/comments about the above topics. > I will start by replying to my email with what I think about the above > questions :) > > Regards, > > Rajith Attapattu > Red Hat > http://rajith.2rlabs.com/ > -- Regards, Rajith Attapattu Red Hat http://rajith.2rlabs.com/
