On Wed, 2003-02-26 at 15:34, Jack Coates wrote: > On Wed, 2003-02-26 at 10:37, Greg Meyer wrote: > ... > > I agree with you wholeheartedly, however the point I was trying to make was > > that as we all sit around here and discuss these things, very often we have > > that discussion based on what we think a particular term, like beta, rc or > > stability mean, without acknowledging the way MandrakeSoft means them. I do > > not believe that we should not communicate with the company to try to get > > them to change their definition, or modify thier way of thinking. Perhaps > > changing the way releases are numbered, so that common perception aligns with > > reality is the way to go, but as an alternative to your proposal, instead of > > changing the MandrakeSoft release philosophy, change the numbering so there > > are no longer any point releases. 10 and 11 vs 9.1 and 9.2. Although this > > would align reality more with what peoples understandings of releases are, I > > acknowledge that it does not address your criticism about bug fixing. > ... > > I think this is the most reasonable course of action; it assuages > symptoms and concerns without imposing more stress on MandrakeSoft. That > way, instead of continually re-explaining that Mandrake doesn't follow > the convention of bleeding-edge in x.0, increasing stability in x.1,2, > Mandrake and its users can simply say "it's a different release > strategy." Date-based release name is certainly one good way to imply > this philosophy, but it has a few bad marketing implications. Code names > are fun, but people will probably gripe. Sticking with the ordinal > numbers and losing the decimals is probably the best option.
I'm not apposed to anything being proposed. What I would like to see is earlier testing on new items. For example tmdns and mdkkdm and ZeroConf... all are viable concepts. The intent is good. The logic is solid. But for a totally new product like this perhaps first "giving it" to the users of the current stable as a "Hey guys n gals what do you think of this?" Then when it hits' Beta it won't be such a shock to those who aren't living in the cooker. 90% of the problems have been with this kind of program.... Examples would be the changes to drakrpm, msec, etc. In the early forms they brought nothing but complaints and a lot of repetitive problems in this forum. But KDE 3.1 is going smooth as silk... why... because the 9.0 users beat it up for a while on a stable system. Problems were more isolated, sure to be caused by KDE3.1 and therefore easier to troubleshoot. This does two things. One gives all the longer Beta cycle they are looking for. Two, smooths out the curve on bugs by spreading them over 6 months instead of 2. Finally MDK needs to stop working so hard to be better than RH and SuSE.... it already is. James
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