Brevsville Administrator wrote:
Hi Derek
I think you maybe don't understand the market. Yes if you sold your software to banks etc you have to test test test.. but hey how much Does SuSE cost, how much does Netscape cost? That is the point here. If I contract to write software, we build the cost of thorough testing into the quote. If someone want to save a few bucks .. we factor it out a little.
Not for one second am I saying it can't be done. The question is at what cost.
Chris
On Wed, 16 Aug 2000 13:02:14 +0100, Derek Fountain wrote:
Subtle ones maybe, but not show stoppers.
Not at all,. as a commercial developer myself I can test on 20 machines and upon release there are always 10-20% of users that will find "show stoppers". Computer configurations just vary too much.
Then your testing sucks. If the software we produce here failed for even 1% of users we'd have banks, airlines, insurance companies and heck knows what else suing for millions in damages. Making software that works is not difficult. You just do it right, and don't ship it until it's done.
Have a look at the recent posting to the list. People have been screaming for the SuSE 7 en version the second the de one was released.
And people have been screaming ever since 6.4 was released that Netscape doesn't work, that kpackage doesn't work, etc, etc. Having demand for your product is great, shipping a faulty product to take short term gain from those gulible enough to buy it is not. Not in the Linux world anyway.
Yup and during that time maybe there is a new kernel or a new vmware or new X server etc ... you'd never release anything. But if you did freeze SuSE before the release and test for 2 more weeks, people would scream
I'm not saying a distro should be put on ice while the public ponders it. I'm saying that the last stage of the testing - which is going to be done in SuSE labs anyway - is done in public.
The FSF is always looking for testers and engineers.. get involved!
If that's aimed at me, I am involved. I sent a bug report to the KDE team this very morning. If SuSE release a beta of 7.0 I'd download it and get involved in testing that to.
I think you need to think of companies like SuSE as VARs and Packagers.. they don't write this stuff, they improve some things and have to rely on the package developers for the testing. If you want more robust releases, buy SCO and pay for it.. sheesh!
Not sure I see your point here. No one is blaming SuSE for Netscape releasing a crap product, or anyone else releasing buggy software. My contention is that SuSE don't need to make avoidable mistakes with their distro. One way to prevent these is to offer a beta test shortly before the CDs go to manufacture. Other distros do it so your arguments that it won't work are illfounded.
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RedHat Rawhide is what you mean. I was using it for 5 years ever since I got on the internet, but they recently rebuilt every single rpm every 2 weeks and if you made one mistake figuring out the new release bugs you would be gone plus it would take a couple days to download w/56k and a couple more to get it working. You get newest compiler, newest sendmail, newest glibc, etc... and to top it all off you get the regular contrib at RedHat, which always has new stuff in it. Take a look at www.redhat.com/devnet. Even people.redhat.com had at least one prerson in it with stuff to try out. As far as the kernel goes I recompile alsa-cvs and the kernel every time a new patch comes out, which requires reading linux-kernel to see which release might be unusable and how to fix it. I am using Netscape-4.74 from Netscape and I use it w/Adobe Acrobat4(USA), timidity & ump. As far as being a consumer goes I am only a cardboard box ripper, skid stacker, line loader etc.. so I don't know about the software market, but I am obsessed with getting the newest version of anything the day it comes out on freshmeat.net or www.icewalk.com. I just started using SuSE about 3 weeks ago and I was amazed that I could run linux w/out gnome or kde, connecting to the internet from the command line to do ftp. Probably it wouldn't matter what distro I used since I am only a hobbiest and my dollar isn't really the one that counts along with my opinions, but I was trying to build everything from source when I was using redhat anyway. Still, it would be nice if development at SuSE was open and you could start using beta and alpha rpms now before they ever got into 7.0. After all, the stuff we would be using would only work correctly in a SuSE world anyway if it was put into a future release. kmb SuSE-6.4 -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq