On Mon, 2003-02-24 at 17:36, Todd Lyons wrote: > Lyvim Xaphir wrote on Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 12:46:46PM -0500 : > > > > I think things are moving a little too fast. There are alot of new > > people getting involved with cooker development, and I feel like 9.1 is > > going to be released before this leverage reaches full potential. I > > just started bugzilla posting myself this weekend, and already they are > > pushing towards rc2. I think that it's more important that this distro > > be bullet proof, than it is for it to be released early in order to make > > a grab for sales. If it's bulletproof, then the sales will be there. > > More people should have gotten involved earlier. There's been a month > of betas and plain Cooker before that. The beta cycle started a month > ago,
Precisely, and that is what I would like to know about. Yes I know that historically Mandrake has had a 6 month release cycle. However I have seen other projects much less complicated than the Mandrake distro tackled with much longer beta cycles, and most of the time the benefits were substantial. So the question I have is, why the short beta cycle? Is it because Red Hat does it too? Take for example the distro obsolescence announcement that RH put out not too long ago. It did not escape me that Mandrake turned around and made the same move shortly thereafter. There are alot of anologies between the RH releases and the Mandrake releases. RH phoebe v8.1beta3 2003/02/19 LM 91RC1 2003/02/18 RH psyche v8.0 2002/09/30 LM dolphin 9.0 2002/09/25 RH Valhalla v7.3 2002/05/06 LM bluebird 8.2 2002/03/18 RH enigma v7.2 2001/10/22 LM vitamin 8.1 2001/09/27 RH seawolf v7.1 2001/04/16 LM traktopel 8.0 2001/04/20 RH guiness v7.0 2000/08/30 RH zoot v6.2 2000/03/08 LM ulysses 7.2 2000/10/30 LM helium 7.1 2000/06/13 LM air v7.0 2000/01/14 RH cartman v6.1 1999/09/27 RH hedwig v6.0 1999/04/19 LM helios v6.1 1999/09/14 LM venus v6.0 1999/05/27 LM festen 5.3 1999/02/11 RH apollo v5.2 1998/10/14 LM leeloo v5.2 1998/12/01 RH manhattan v5.1 1998/05/11 LM venice 5.1 1998/07/23 I note that above RH and LM are neck and neck except for years 1999 and 2000, where Mandrakesoft released one MORE distro than RH did. Is six months or one month beta time (or LESS) a sacred cow? These questions are not even really originally my own, they were raised by a friend of mine (a fan of LM) to me in casual conversation. As I had not considered it before, I didn't have an answer. Now that I see no dust on the 9.0 boxes, I begin to wonder myself. The voting system is just now beginning to impact the distro development process btw, and it's sucking people in, and yes people are scrambling. But these things take time. > and now that code freeze has hit is when people start screaming. > All the things people are begging for now should have been asked for > last month. Now that it's too late, people are saying "delay it". Well > the schedule was announced a month ago. A month ago is when people > should have started this discussion. > Perhaps the fans and customers *are* annoying at times. But no matter how much they may be, the fact remains that the sharks and snakes outside the mailing lists out there in the internet media world are ten times worse. These are your buddies here, not your enemies. I do agree that the need for information to your "common masses" is needed, because not everybody is in a position to either a) gain access to current cooker quick enough on a regular basis to launch their own private development campaign or b) has other reasons why they can't participate, such as RL. I'm a good example; I could be billing for time right now rather than writing this and syncing up with a cooker mirror. Alot of people on the lists have valid opinions or questions as fans or customers, but have other things to do other than concentrate on another mailing list that they wouldn't be able to participate in anyway; when they could be informed on the non-development lists with a synopsis from a veteran such as civileme. Another idea to keep in mind is that the crew that participates on the non-devel mailing lists do so out of not just a desire to get help but to also give help and input to the evolution of the distro out of their own free time (and their money). So I think that just brushing them and their concerns aside is a grave mistake; no matter when they are submitted. LX -- ��������������������������������������������������� Kernel 2.4.21pre4-6mdk Mandrake 9.1 RC1 Enlightenment 0.16.5-12mdk Evolution 1.2.2-1mdk Registered Linux User #268899 http://counter.li.org/ ���������������������������������������������������
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
