Re: [PHP4BETA] PHP 4.0.0 Release packaged

* Joey <[email protected]> [000520 22:20] wrote:
> Everyone who is saying that it's too early to release PHP 4.0 should take
> a note from history...
> 
> Linux did not become so popular by being the best, the most stable, the
> most well documented, the most bug free.
> 
> It won by "release early, release often". I quoth from "The Cathedral and
> the Bazaar":
> 
> 	"Linus was aiming to maximize the number of person hours thrown at
> 	 debugging and development, even at the possible cost of
> 	 instability and user-base burnout if any serious bug proved
> 	 intractable."
> 

*scribbles down another reason he uses FreeBSD*

If you want to use an unstable snapshot of php there's plenty of
ways to checkout your own copy of the source, there's no point in
harrassing the developers to release before they are comfortable,
as you said:

 > I know I will never be Rasmus or Zeev, getting the respect of people I've
 > never even met,

Part of that respect comes from working thier fingers to the bone
fixing problems that crop up.

> I know I will never be Rasmus or Zeev, getting the respect of people I've
> never even met, so the only thing that keeps me going is the hope that
> this stuff will go somewhere. If we hold off release until "all
> reproducible bugs are fixed", eventually, some of the volunteers will
> start to burn out. And people will stop waiting to start new projects in
> PHP 4 and will write them in PHP 3, or some commercial product that will
> get them what they want.
> 
> Release away.

This is total garbage, there are many people putting thier jobs
and businesses on the line by using open source.  This would be
the smack in the face that would get someone to never want to be
associated with open source ever again nevermind loosing thier job
or having thier business ruined.

Remember, the php CVS repository is completely open to the public,
this isn't the Linux kernel where releases need to be made so that
people can see the changes.

Software development isn't a popularity contest, you do it right,
or you shouldn't do it at all.

-- 
-Alfred Perlstein - [[email protected]|[email protected]]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."