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Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 10:39:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: Igor Peshansky <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
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To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Latest Cygwin Release 5 month old...  (gold star alert)
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On Tue, 20 Jun 2006, Christopher Faylor wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 03:24:04PM -0700, Brian Dessent wrote:
> >Linda Walsh wrote:
> >
> >>     Nobody like to hear "oh, it's fixed in the latest build, but
> >> not in the released product."
> >
> >Whether they like it or not doesn't change the situation at all.  The
> >fact remains that very often reported problems are fixed in snapshots,
> >so saying "try a snapshot first" is a very effective way to save a lot
> >of time on the part of both the person with the problem and the people
> >on the list that take the hours out of their day to try to help.  And
> >isn't that the goal of everyone posting to the list with problems, to
> >resolve them quickly?  This is a single DLL file we're talking about,
> >not a linux kernel, and it takes seconds to replace and doesn't require
> >a reboot.
> >
> >>     If a developer doesn't think it is good enough to release,
> >> then I'm not sure I want to be testing on my "production" machine.
> >> Not everyone has a spare test machine.
> >
> >That kind of logic is toxic poison to an open source project.  How do
> >you think those releases come to be?  If you want stable releases then
> >you need to regularly test snapshots and give feedback, otherwise the
> >releases will not be of high quality.  This is all a volunteer effort
> >here, and the developers' only way of assessing whether their fixes are
> >effective and stable is by hearing from people on the list that try
> >them.  If everyone played the "I'm not going anywhere near something
> >that doesn't have the mythical release stamp of approval" card then no
> >forward progress would ever be made, and you'd have a lot of really
> >buggy releases.
>
> It's been a while since I've given out a gold star but I think Brian's
> email definitely rates one.

Hear, hear.  Done.

> Thanks, Brian, for always being the voice of reason.

Heh, Brian is moving up: his previous gold star was more than a year ago,
for "constant good advice and determination to help on the Cygwin list for
two weeks straight". :-)
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_	    pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu | igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		Igor Peshansky, Ph.D. (name changed!)
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		old name: Igor Pechtchanski
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"Las! je suis sot... -Mais non, tu ne l'es pas, puisque tu t'en rends compte."
"But no -- you are no fool; you call yourself a fool, there's proof enough in
that!" -- Rostand, "Cyrano de Bergerac"

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