Hi Steve, I was wondering when this would transpire. I am very happy to see that the Flex Team worked out the way to create a better product, but remember us who for one reason or another make specialized changes to our source code.
I am not the programmer that you have on your Team, but I like to try a few ideas. I have enjoyed being able to do so under the limitations that the SVN imposed. I like the ability to get a source release based back on a versioned product. It will give me a base to compare to. Thank You for the wonderful support and great service. "Just another dumb computer man" and Flex 3000 player. Jim Fuller N7VR -- http://www.n7vr.org International TCP/IP Gateways Robot Operator -- http://www.ampr-gateways.org MTAPRS NET Server Operator -- http://www.mtaprs.net CWOP-2 -- http://www.wxqa.com IRLP Node 3398 - http://irlp.fuller.net Original ARECC contributor -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stephen Hicks, N5AC Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 4:45 PM To: flexedge Subject: [FlexEdge] Changes at FlexRadio FlexRadio Systems was born of open source software. In the early days there were a number of individuals contributing to the source base. The entire software defined radio community has benefited greatly as capabilities were added by these individuals outside of the company as FlexRadio was building PowerSDR. All of us at FlexRadio would first like to say a heart-felt *THANK YOU* to all of the individuals that have contributed. A significant number of our customers enjoy and have grown accustomed to using the public source code repository, SVN, as changes were made daily and hourly to the code base by these individuals. A few of these enthusiasts have become part of our Beta software team, testing new features we add to the software and helping us create better software. *As the company has grown over the last few of years, several changes have occurred:* 1. We are no longer serving just the enthusiasts and experimenters, but also pragmatists, and the demand for high quality, reliable software has risen 2. PowerSDR has transitioned from an experimenter's platform to software that many use in a "production environment" 3. As the features and capabilities have grown, much of the "low hanging software fruit" is gone and many of those that were contributing have moved on to other challenging projects. There are literally only a couple of individuals outside the company still contributing to the code base 4. FlexRadio has made the move from ad hoc development to a defined software process which includes active management of priorities, regular releases, automated software builds and eventually automated testing 5. PowerSDR is now released with an industry standard integrated installation rather than a "binary drop" more prevalent in the open source world 6. As we release versioned software (such as 2.0.5), we know every change in the software by either a defect number (DE#) or user story number (US#) 7. We have incorporated a number of proprietary software packages in PowerSDR that cannot be placed on an open source SVN, requiring us to maintain two SVN repositories, one public and one private, and requiring a more complex build process that pulls from both repositories. 8. We have more than doubled the size of our software staff in the last year 9. Occasionally, users that are not prepared to use Alpha software (SVN) will load the software and then require support resources to downgrade to a supported version. While our official policy is that we do not provide this kind of support, most of you know that we generally help out anyway (hey, we're just nice guys!). This has increased our support costs, however, and these costs must be passed on to customers. 10. We are seeing defects ("bugs") reported against interim states of the repository (SVN xxxx) that are essentially noise for us since the repository is in a state of flux most of the time 11. We are on the precipice of dramatically increasing our network usage with automated builds and automated tests running against an Internet source repository ...in short, we're growing up! With all of these changes, the drawbacks of maintaining a public SVN repository now outweigh the benefits of maintaining one. We would far prefer to hear issues reported against specific versions of software (2.0.5) instead of an SVN version. As a result of this and our new software process, we have made the following changes: 1. The public SVN will no longer be updated by FlexRadio Systems as a general rule, but may remain online for some period of time. This was not a decision we took lightly, but there were no dissenters either -- everyone close to us said "yes, you need to do that" after seeing how we work 2. Day to day development on PowerSDR will be performed on the internal source code repository 3. We are using an Agile methodology for development that incorporates many of the KPAs/practices of both Scrum and eXtreme Programming (XP) 4. We are using development iterations which culminate in a complete versioned build of the software on a periodic basis (a.k.a. internal release) 5. These internal releases are tested internally and sent to our Beta testers. If we feel that releasing the software to the public is warranted, we will post the release on our website (distribute binaries). In general, we will do this anytime we have added functionality but have not broken anything significant. The output of the testing will also be a set of release notes explaining any issues we found during testing. We hope these will help you make an intelligent decision about using that particular software release. 6. Some releases will advance from our Beta test team to the FlexEdge group for further testing and then periodically we will produce a general availability release that we recommend all customers use We know for some, this will not be a welcome change. There may be a perception that benefits are being removed. We understand this, but there are big gains from what we are doing: We are now more rapidly than ever fixing defects and adding features that result in better software. We are more focused than ever before and we are regularly looking at the issues and ideas brought to us by our awesome customers (you). By removing focus on issues reported against software we knew was in flux when the defect was found, we are able to add focus on fixing problems that exist in software we have officially released. This means better software, faster to you, our customers. For those wishing to receive a source drop when we release binaries, you may send an email request to [email protected] with the binary version for which you need source. We will not be publishing internal code base monikers with software releases, instead preferring defect reports against released binary packages with dotted version numbers (2.0.5). You *must*include the dotted release number in order to receive source. Source will be promptly delivered per the GPL. I truly love software development and I love our products. We have reached an inflection point where we could continue as we were or we could grow up and serve you better. We've made the decision to grow up and I hope you are able to see what this means for you, our valued customers. I would be happy to address any questions or concerns you may have with these changes! 73, Steve Stephen Hicks, N5AC, AAR6AM VP Engineering FlexRadio SystemsT 13091 Pond Springs Road, #250 Austin, TX 78729 Phone: 512-535-4713 x205 Email: [email protected] Web: www.flex-radio.com *Tune In ExcitementT* PowerSDRT is a trademark of FlexRadio Systems _______________________________________________ Flexedge mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexedge_flex-radio.biz This is the FlexRadio Systems e-mail Reflector called FlexEdge. It is used for posting topics related to SDR software development and experimentalist who are using beta versions of the software. _______________________________________________ Flexedge mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexedge_flex-radio.biz This is the FlexRadio Systems e-mail Reflector called FlexEdge. It is used for posting topics related to SDR software development and experimentalist who are using beta versions of the software.
