Membership in the "Experimental Group" will be open to all FlexRadio customers who are willing to follow the rules associated with the privilege. We reserve the right to restrict access to certain highly experimental SVN branches until they are stable enough for testing outside the developer group itself. One important rule that comes with the privilege: Do not expect technical support from FlexRadio when running any software other than the then current Official Release.
Let me note that virtually all public and private comments on this topic have been extremely supportive of making the split in the reflector. We will put a lot of thought into how we proceed before we pull the trigger on the change. 73, Gerald Gerald Youngblood, K5SDR President FlexRadio Systems 13091 Pond Springs Rd. #250 Austin, TX 78729 Phone: 512-535-4713 www.flex-radio.com "Tune in excitement!" (TM) -----Original Message----- From: Howard S. White [mailto:drpa...@kleega.com] Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 6:25 PM To: ger...@flex-radio.com; mnar...@comcast.net; Dave Gomberg Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: RE: [Flexradio] All using SVN 3166 or higher I do agree that for marketing purposes you need to separate the Support Reflector from the Experimental Group. There are a lot of people who do not understand the difference between Support and Experimentaion and it is pretty obvious that your competitors are pointing to the bugs incurred in Experimentation as being symptomatic of product defects. Please do not limit membership to the Experimental Group. A lot of people lurk in the background reading the issues about the latest developments and occasionally we may actually have something useful to contribute. By restricting membership in the Experimental Group, you will be cutting yourself off from a very valuable resource and ultimately slowing your developmental progress. So please do not cut your nose off to spite your face. __________________________________________________________ Howard S. White Ph.D. P. Eng., VE3GFW/K6 ex-AE6SM KY6LA Website: www.ky6la.com "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" "Ham Antennas Save Lives - Katrina, 2003 & 2007 San Diego Fires, 911" -----Original Message----- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Gerald Youngblood Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 1:50 PM To: mnar...@comcast.net; 'Dave Gomberg' Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] All using SVN 3166 or higher Mike, I am sure we can find a happy medium that meets the interests of both groups. We will put a lot of thought into it, taking into account all of the comments we are getting on the subject. Foremost, there needs to be some qualification of who fits in which group and where they communicate. I also agree that it should be called, "experimental/prototype." Regards, Gerald Gerald Youngblood, K5SDR President FlexRadio Systems 13091 Pond Springs Rd. #250 Austin, TX 78729 Phone: 512-535-4713 www.flex-radio.com "Tune in excitement!" (TM) -----Original Message----- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Mike Naruta Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 3:21 PM To: Dave Gomberg Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] All using SVN 3166 or higher That sort of models the modern amateur radio transceiver manufacturers. You may get an upgrade infrequently, after it has been tested many times. We are familiar with that process. One group of hams are attracted to the Flex-Radio products because of the performance and features. Another group enjoys the dynamics of a Software-Defined Radio and thrives on the improvements and new features. Do we limit the second group's access to placate the first group's fears of a software problem? Had the development been closed, we would have missed the excellent contributions from those not in the original developer group. What if instead of talking about SVN or alpha versions, we called it experimental or prototype versions? It implies the possibility of problems and the unsupported nature of the software. A kind word off- reflector to those who talk about issues with the experimental versions here should be adequate. Mike - AA8K Dave Gomberg wrote: > > IBM developed this fork in the 1970's when an operating system might > support thousands of concurrent users on one CPU and cost millions per > day to be down (like the principal Merril-Lynch machine that did about > 40% of the NYSEs volume). > > Development started out experimentally, when the developer was sure it > was right, he ran it on his own work machine in production. When he > survived, he ran it on a machine shared with a few development > buddies. When it passed that test, it ran on a shared machine for the > whole development lab, in a version that might contain several changes > all slotted for the same release schedule. > > When it was believed stable, it was shipped to the research labs for > use in their environments (this was called alpha testing, since it was the > first non-development test). When it passed alpha test, it was > released to volunteer real users in the real world (this was called beta > test, nobody risked big money on a beta test). Beta testers got direct > to level 3 support so that problems could be quickly described and > resolved. > > Finally a "general availability" release was announced, prepared, and > delivered (in that order). Usually 60% of installations were on the > latest release, 30% one release back, and sprinklings of others (who > got tired of hearing that the fix to their problem was to upgrade). > _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
