Georg Baum wrote:
** NO NEW FEATURES ARE ALLOWED FROM RIGHT NOW **
I do not agree with this one if it means all new features, not just those
that require changes to the core.
The sooner we fix the basic things, the sooner we can introduce new and
small features. The fact is that right now, things are not improving.
Maybe basic features working last weekend, but they don't know. We HAVE
to react to that.
I partially do not agree, and I feel betrayed: A long time everything is
allowed, and then from one day to the other we are in a freeze. Basic
functionality like latex encodings that has been working in previous
releases is not allowed to come back, but new features like multiple
windows are allowed to be finished.
We are not trying to be unfair, or unreasonable. We just have to draw a
line somewhere, because we feel that something has to change compared to
how things are going now. The sooner people use their energy on fixing
things, the sooner new features can come in again.
This decision is silly IMHO, and it will also give bad press if release n+1
removes some features that were available in release n.
We will ready to accept bad press, if that is what will happen. LyX is
*seriously* broken right now. It is NOT useable for ANY work.
Don't think we are just talking here. We are 5 people working full time
to fix things now for several days in a row. Unfortunately, our progress
is slow, so we conclude that we have to do something to prevent the boat
from sinking.
I would have done different things in a different order if it would have
been clear that this freeze comes now. For example I have several smaller
changes in the pipeline that are pretty safe, e.g. some of the bugs marked
with fileformat.
Of course, bug fixes are allowed. That is the point of the freeze: To
improve the quality of the program, not to make it worse.
If that decision is a final one then don't expect any further 1.5 work from
me.
We are 5 people working on LyX now, but we also know that most of us
will not work on LyX from Tuesday on. So we are very interested in
finding a way to keep all talent motivated and help with making LyX a
great application.
You could have come to Denmark and participated in the discussion. All
of you know that this kind of decision has always been made at meetings,
because it's just not possible to discuss this on mail. At start, the
five of us did not agree on this decision, but when we discussed the
matter in depth, we all agreed on the decision.
We hope that you will reconsider and help us fix the show stoppers. The
sooner we reach the critical point where trunk is usable again, the
sooner the fun can begin again for all of us.
Maybe you should also talk about why the current state is like it is. And
maybe some of you should have a look on the many open bugs in 1.4. Fixing
these has had a far too low priority IMO. 1.4 was released with some known
regressions wrt 1.3. Now it looks like 1.5 will be released with even more
regressions + the already existing 1.4 bugs. Try to explain that to any
user. I would not be able to do so.
We are all unhappy about the current state, but we are where we are. We
did discuss whether we should seriously revert to the 1.4 code base, and
maybe even start fixing the issues in 1.4 instead of continuing with the
trunk. In the end, that was considered too drastic, so we decided that
we should try for maybe 6 months to rescue the trunk. Do you think this
is the wrong decision?
Regards,
Asger & Juergen
- Re: How to cook an omelet Asger Ottar Alstrup
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