Okay, here's how an early access program works:
IntelliJ periodically provides drops of their latest test builds for specific end users to work with and evaluate, if desired. Being test builds, they will have bugs, and often quite a few of them. The users know this, and trade the hassle of the bugs for access to new features before the production release, and input onto what the new features should be. When the test users find bugs, or have new ideas for features, they are supposed to (and I would say morally obligated to) submit those issues into IntelliJ's bug tracking system. IntelliJ is supposed to look at them, and respond at least minimally. They've been pretty good about doing so. This is in everyone's best interest, as IntelliJ gets their pre-production code tested in production settings by more people than they can hire themselves. If you don't wish to be a test user, IntelliJ will happily still sell you a 2.6 license, the most recent production version. It was a pretty incredible product, but the new features in Ariadna make it more than worth my time to be an EAP member. Looking over the proposed feature list for Ariadna, it looks like they should be about to go into 'feature freeze'. At that point, the software is declared 'alpha', and no new features may be added until the full release. Between the alpha date and the full release date, the developers at IntelliJ/Jetbrains will be feverishly fixing the issues with the release candidate, both performance and correctness. They had been doing that before as well, but it had to be interleaved with new feature coding as well. At the end of it all, they ship. There will still be open bugs in the Tracker, but fewer and less severe. Unless you work for NASA, every piece of software you have ever written or used as bugs. IDEA 3.0 won't be any different. Occasionally, when software projects are going VERY BADLY, it may be necessary to do the sort of things you suggest. Although things don't seem to be perfect on the Ariadna project (a bit of feature creep, a few regressions, maybe about a month of slip on an six month project), I don't think things are anywhere near that point on Ariadna. _______________________________________________ Eap-bugs mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.jetbrains.com/mailman/listinfo/eap-bugs
