Re: RFC: Change of WinCvs release advertisment strategy

Oliver,

>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):

With the large volume of downloads we are getting there will always be a
couple of confused idividuals and no matter how you setup the advertising
system. However some adjustment can ease the pain so I am open for changes.

>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.

To me it's very simple. Stable is "stable" and beta is a subject to bugs,
improvements and changes ;)

>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 think it's quite possible with the increased expose system. We managed to
get quite a few milestones in the beta cycle that way. When we are
feature-complete (which is almost...) it will be fairly quick to get the
things "stable" and one of the betas will just be re-released as stable. It
will be stable because the number of people using it will be quite large.
Unless of course cygwin will create another break-thru release in the mean
time ;)

>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:
>(snip)

To expose all releases right on the front page is probably going to create
massive flood of duplicated and solved bugs reports. But we can give it a
try and see how it goes. However I don't think we need to over-complicate
things and it should be enought to make a clear distinctions between stable,
beta and latest releases. Anybody with common sense will understand the
meaning. People are not going to read long explanations anyway...

Let's just map the things to SF releases, e.g.:

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

The latest "reportedly stable" release is WinCvs 1.3.13.2
from 2003-08-11.
[Download] [Notes]

The most up-to-date release is WinCvs 1.3.14 .
from 2003-11-28.
[Download] [Notes]

Latest CVSNT binaries to replace the ones distributes with WinCvs 1.3
[Download(links to CVSNT website)]


I don't think we need to keep the list of "Known Issues". That's what the SF
bugs traker is for.

Best Regards,
Jerzy


 
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