--On Wednesday, June 02, 2010 01:31:17 PM -0700 Joelle Crepsac <jcrep...@stanford.edu> wrote:
All, Thanks, for your comments; I think. I've suggested that 150 people (that do not have administrative privileges) use this application; an application that has had something close to 8 version changes in a few months. I don't consider that SO MANY revisions "active development"... I thought that I could actually get useful answer here; something that I could share with the 150 people I suggested this program to; something they could understand and relate to, and assist in creating some kind of trust and security in changing from their former instant messaging program. Unfortunately, the comments I've received so far aren't the type that should probably be shared.
It is clear that I misunderstood your original question, i.e. "Why is this program constantly being upgraded?" I had taken your question to be an implied criticism of the quality of pidgin that it would require that many fixes. I am a happy user of pidgin and very grateful to the developers who haven spent considerable effort working on pidgin and allowing me to use it for free. I felt that the least I could do was to defend that effort. It seems to me that you are really asking two questions, at least there are two issues that I would like to respond to. The first is open source software in general and the second is system management. Neither issue is specific to pidgin. Open source software is not just free software. While there are no formal standards for open source development, there are some widely accepted concepts that are generally part of open source projects. I think that Eric Raymond's introduction to "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" succinctly describes the issue that is bothering you about open source software. "Linux overturned much of what I thought I knew. I had been preaching the Unix gospel of small tools, rapid prototyping and evolutionary programming for years. But I also believed there was a certain critical complexity above which a more centralized, a priori approach was required. I believed that the most important software (operating systems and really large tools like the Emacs programming editor) needed to be built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation, with no beta to be released before its time. "Linus Torvalds's style of development—release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity—came as a surprise. No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here—rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches (aptly symbolized by the Linux archive sites, who'd take submissions from anyone) out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles." Particularly relevant is "release early and often". Certainly your request for less often releases is at war with this general attitude. There are many reasons that this makes sense and Eric Raymond discusses several. I would point out that cathedral upgrades can be very painful just because so much tends to change when there is a long time between releases. Releasing often tends to mean that changes are smaller and easier to install. To be sure if this style of development is plugged directly into your system management infrastructure there can be a lot of heartburn. You are not required to install the latest version of pidgin. It makes sense to read the changelog to see what has changed and whether it is important to you before you apply it to systems that you manage. Of course, the ability be this selective implies that you maintain a repository of software you install and have a method of deploying that software to the systems that you manage. For me the benefits of open source software out weigh the potential problems and those problems can be mitigated by good system management. But, of course, that is my opinion. Bill -- Bill MacAllister, System Software Programmer Infrastructure Delivery Group, Stanford University
I withdraw my inquiry; please refrain from further attacks. Thanks anyway. Joelle From: Joelle Crepsac [mailto:jcrep...@stanford.edu] Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2010 12:47 PM To: Subject: Why all of the upgrades Why is this program constantly being upgraded? I truly regret sharing it because it's CONSTANTLY revision versions. Does anyone have any ideas when it will remain stable for 6 months or more? It's truly a hassle, and I'm considering using something more stable. Any ideas? Thanks, JC
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