On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 7:32 AM, Donald Woods <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> We need to continue supporting our user community and stop forcing them > to the latest and greatest release. Look at how Tomcat and the HTTP > Server handle support with tons of "." releases. I'm not saying we > should have as many maintenance releases as Tomcat (ie. 5.5.26) but we > should try to keep supporting a release by integrating patches for say 6 > months after the last maintenance release, which would mean we're still > in the 2.0.x 6 months window (released 20071019.) ... > There are still users asking about 1.1.1 on the users mailing list, so > obviously we need to do a better job of supporting our releases and stop > this "try the latest release" and "try the latest snapshot" approach > that we have been doing. Well, it's an open source project and *I* don't have much time supporting the latest and gratest release not to mention I won't certainly have some for the past releases. The aim of our releases should always be to move forward without forgetting our past (and hopefully support people who use the past releases). Think of it this way - if we release 2.0.3, what would be a difference if we named it 2.0.10 or 2.1.1? If a user needs to fix an issue and has to upgrade to some version it doesn't really matter if it's 2.0.3, 2.0.58 or 2.1.1, right? That's what I'm talking about. Let's convince our users (or better yet let them know/believe) that moving with the latest and greatest release is for "their better and calmer life". If an end user has to move up (s)he will have to test it out before upgrade, right? Does it really matter what version it will be if the latest one works? I don't think so. I keep hearing from my customers they don't like the latest release because it's not well baked and noone really knows what to expect. I keep answering them, well perhaps it is not but believe me your pain when something bad happens (after your app worked fine during testing) will be lower than when you're stuck with the past version which you can't fix or expect to be fixed soon. Jacek -- Jacek Laskowski http://www.JacekLaskowski.pl
