There was much stink raised over agressive bumping up of the last build that would be listened to by the network way back when to the point that the developers seem to be quite adverse to doing so anymore (eventhough you hear murmurings once in a while that we should do it coupled with an undertone of dread of being the person to suffer the wraith that that entails). I would like to offer an idea that might give both developers and users a happy middle ground.
Is it not possible to just set the "last good build" (whatever the variables are actually called is unknown to me) to (current_build - n)? n is some "build-lag" that allows users some break from the upgrade treadmill yet is enough to prod them along so that developers get some feel on the network performance effect of their latest and greatest improvements. I would suggest a number like 10. If the developers feel that the latest thing that they have done fixes some terribly hideous flaw in former builds then they can bump up the current_build number by more then 1 (but < 10) but should do so only for good reason. Otherwise there will be screams from the users to boost n and we are back to square one. This policy can be advertised everywhere so that it is no surprise when someone's node falls off the edge of the network. It also absolves the developers of the resposibility of having to continuously update the webpage and make announcements everytime there is a significant change encouraging eveyone to update. I think that this will be acceptable from both sides. I believe most users understand the need to keep up to date on a system in development but just don't want the rug pulled out from beneath their feet suddenly. On the flip side, I believe most developers understand that not all users want to do daily upgrades yet they also want to prod them along a little bit to get some real feedback on changes that they've made. Mike _______________________________________________ devl mailing list devl at freenetproject.org http://hawk.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
