Re: A user perspective

On Sat, Mar 22, 2003 at 06:05:01PM +0100, dan carpenter wrote:
> On Sunday 23 March 2003 10:54 am, you wrote:
> > What is stopping you from checking the weekly (or even daily) CVS tree
> > out and building it yourself ? You could even help in the
> > testing/bugreporting/fixing process, and make faster schedules easier.
> 
> >From a practicle perspective using CVS is better than releasing snapshots but 
> from a PR perspective snapshots are very valuable.

So you think this whole mess is only a PR issue ?

> For my project (smatch.sf.net) I like releases because they are announced on 
> freshmeat.net.  When I see that my not enough people are visiting my website 
> (kbugs.org), I create a new release or I post an announcement to lkml or the 
> kernel janitors list.

Well, but that is the difference between your project and xfree86.
Xfree86 do releases when they are technically ready, and not from
getting web site attention. This is the same difference between debian
releases (which releases when it is ready) and other commercial
distribution (which need the money from selling the CDs or need PR
attention). Guess which is known for better quality. And even redhat is
now doing an entreprise release with 2 year release cycles or soemthing
such.

> CVS access means that smatch users have to take initiative.  An anouncement 
> means I am taking the initiative to contact you.  It is an invitation to test 
> my code, give me feedback and get involved with the project.

We have the distributions as intermediarra for that, and anyway, i am
not sure that someone who can't be bothered to build X from CVS is all
that valuable for bug report. If you look both the debian BTS and the
DRI bugzilla, most of the bug reports are useless things without even a
return address, which only server to distract from the real issues.

Friendly,

Sven Luther