RFC: Change of WinCvs release advertisment strategy

Hi all!

As you might have noticed from recent postings on the CVSGUI list I'm 
getting more and more tired of explaining to users why WinCvs 1.2 is not 
really to be recommended any more. Setting up a FAQ item for this feels 
like the wrong solution to the wrong problem IMHO. Therefore I'd like to 
make the following proposal which was originally inspired by the way 
Tony recently changed the release advertising (which IIRC was also 
proposed by someone else on the CVSNT list):

First, let's drop the "stable" and "beta" labels in their current form 
for good. They are definitely not representing what most people 
associate with those terms. IMO labeling releases as "stable" (or not) 
before actually having had the release under user exposure is not 
feasible with the kind of testing facilities we have at our disposal.

I therefore vote to even more agressively implement and especially 
advertise the "announce-after-the-fact" approach that Jerzy is already 
effectively using in silence. In addition to the announcements, let's 
put it up big on the home page as well, e.g. instead of the current 
"WinCvs 1.2 is the stable release" write:

""
The last "feature-complete" milestone was WinCvs 1.2
 from 2001-02-21.
 [Download] [Features] [Known Issues]

The latest "reportedly stable" release is WinCvs 1.3.13.2
 from 2003-08-11.
 [Download] [Changes/Additions] [Known Issues]

The most up-to-date release is WinCvs 1.3.14 .
 from 2003-11-28.
 [Download] [Changes/Additions] [Known Issues]

For anyone who wants to avoid potential trouble it is recommended to use 
the latest "reportedly stable" release. Make sure you read the Changes 
and Known Issues pages in order to decide which version is the best for 
you. We will try to keep these updated as issues get reported even after 
releases. For WinCvs 1.3.x and later it also recommended to use these 
releases in conjunction with the latest "stable" CVSNT client binaries 
or similar cvsgui-enabled CVS client (unless stated otherwise in the 
Known Issues documents). The most recent stable CVSNT binaries at the 
time of each release will already be included in the download.
""

This way you could "shift" the recommendation labels, very similar to 
what Jerzy is recently doing with the baseline tags. If necessary we 
could even withdraw a "reportedly stable" release and revert the text to 
the last one before that. This should be an exception however.
After a milestone release the latest "reportedly stable" release will be 
identical to the milestone for some time until the up-to-date releases 
have sufficiently stabilized again.

"Milestones" are IMO just internal, organizational markers. They are 
also less of a moving target than the intermediate releases for people 
who write documentation or supplemental tools.

Maybe we should even set up a rough "rule of thumb" for how long to wait 
before declaring a release "reportedly stable" (taking into account the 
number of downloads, the time elapsed since the release and some value 
indicating the severity of changes made since the last release). Then we 
could add an icon or a descriptive text next to the "most up-to-date 
release" indicating whether it currently looks whether it is likely to 
become the next "reportedly stable" release or not. Maybe following the 
traffic light idiom: Gray for the first phase after the release before 
sufficient exposure has taken place, green if no reports are made for a 
certain period of time with sufficient exposure, and yellow if anything 
got reported that forbids the release to become the next "reportedly 
stable" one. Red would indicate that the reported issues were so serious 
that use of the release is actually discouraged. In the latter two cases 
the icon/whatever should link to the relevant Known Issue entries to 
make it all transparent.

Note that this is not a change in the release process or versioning 
scheme or whatever but merely a change in the way releases are 
advertised.

I will happily volunteer to set up and maintain the relevant web pages 
or sections thereof (i.e. those referring to WinCvs - can't comment on 
gCvs or MacCvs).

Comments?

Oliver
----	------------------
JID:	[email protected]
ICQ:	18777742	(http://wwp.icq.com/18777742)


 

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