Re: SM 2.3 Changelog
David E. Ross wrote: On 7/28/11 9:43 AM, Robert Kaiser wrote: David E. Ross schrieb: That is sometimes called lemming behavior, which might be appropriate in this case. After all, the legend is that lemmings follow each other off a cliff, into the ocean, and to their deaths. You mean Firefox will die just as Chrome has and SeaMonkey has before? Robert Kaiser From my long experience (30+ years) in software QA, the long-term cost of frequently churning out versions with new features and not merely bug-fixes will eventually either weaken necessary QA through shortcuts to meet schedules or else consume developer resources to the point of weakening the organization. It appears that frequent releases might already be driving away users who otherwise not only have to update the product but also find that needed extensions no longer work. Extensions constitute one of the major features of Mozilla-based applications. Today, the problem with extensions results from the fact that, like SeaMonkey itself, most extensions are developed as hobbies by volunteers who are not paid. With frequent new versions of Mozilla-based applications, extension developers find themselves in the same situation as the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, running as fast as they can just to stand still and having to run faster than they can to make progress -- while still having to earn a living. +1 I'm a fan of feature release followed by n (n=1) bug fix releases, so you get a usable version fairly often, like stability releases for the Linux kernel, that kind of thing. In other words, having versions the (majority of) users find better than the last stable version. Having people generally feel that your QA has vanished is particularly bad when doing volunteer work, since the only reward you get is people thinking you have produced something great. The fact that 2.2, with broken address book, was not considered a brown bag release and quickly followed by 2.2.1 indicates that quantity is more important than quality. If you never add names to your address book, 2.2 is fine. If you get 5-10 new addresses a day in Collected addresses and have to type them into the production AB by hand because you can't move them with drag and drop, it's worth the pain to fall back to an earlier (working) version, and disable automatic updates. I know SM uses some shared TBird code, the one person I know who uses TBird tells me address book is still broken in the nightly she tried. Sigh. I'm grateful for the work people do, but I think the whole Mozilla effort has lost its way. It feels as if Firefox is the only thing which still gets QA resources and fixes in a timely manner. And IIRC the fixes in SM address book were rejected for TBird, so it would have to be maintained in SM long term. -- Bill Davidsen david...@tmr.com We are not out of the woods yet, but we know the direction and have taken the first step. The steps are many, but finite in number, and if we persevere we will reach our destination. -me, 2010 ___ support-seamonkey mailing list support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
Re: SM 2.3 Changelog: “TODO”
get-funky.dig wrote: I'm afraid... seeing this concerns me. Please don't let Seamonkey become Firefox's “red-headed-stepchild”. Please let us not suffer the nonsensical patterns of late from that cr*p-factory (i.e. paraphrased, following more the Update Schedule, and borrowed nomenclature; updates scheme of Google Chrome) for the In-Kids' Club. The reason Chrome can run that way is that Google has resources to provide fixes in parallel with features. Mozilla seems to have decided to go to a mostly new features resource allocation (I say seems, based on what's released). SM lacks the resources to do that, when new features take 100% of the resources there's little effort put into bug fixes. The project is allowed to exist but treated like a charity, from what I see. Note that I am not inside, I just read the endless posts from SM people saying we don't have the resources to do that. Which is why users can't code stuff themselves and get it into the SM releases, accepting a feature would mean maintaining it forever. -- Bill Davidsen david...@tmr.com We are not out of the woods yet, but we know the direction and have taken the first step. The steps are many, but finite in number, and if we persevere we will reach our destination. -me, 2010 ___ support-seamonkey mailing list support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
Re: SM 2.3 Changelog
Bill Davidsen wrote: I'm a fan of feature release followed by n (n=1) bug fix releases, so you get a usable version fairly often, like stability releases for the Linux kernel, that kind of thing. Me too, but as I explained in some other post, we don't have much of a choice anymore for the most part. As far as the address book breakage is concerned: We could have done a minor version update for that if we had found the issue earlier (the breakage on the development branch, trunk, was known and much larger, but the release branch dd issue was unknown) *and* had a reviewed (!) fix in hand. The fix that I'm talking about has only been finished about a week ago, in time for SM 2.3, which is not too far off anymore (currently in beta), so releasing a 2.2.1 at this point doesn't make much sense. The fact that 2.2, with broken address book, was not considered a brown bag release and quickly followed by 2.2.1 indicates that quantity is more important than quality. 2.2 was rushed, so much is true. I know SM uses some shared TBird code, the one person I know who uses TBird tells me address book is still broken in the nightly she tried. Sigh. I don't think that's true. The TB developers made a change that broke us (because we were missing a part on our side), not the other way around. I'm grateful for the work people do, but I think the whole Mozilla effort has lost its way. It feels as if Firefox is the only thing which still gets QA resources and fixes in a timely manner. 90% true. The other 10% is for TB. [Note: IMO] And IIRC the fixes in SM address book were rejected for TBird, so it would have to be maintained in SM long term. Again, I think you got something wrong there. Greetings, Jens -- Jens Hatlak http://jens.hatlak.de/ SeaMonkey Trunk Tracker http://smtt.blogspot.com/ ___ support-seamonkey mailing list support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
Re: SM 2.3 Changelog: “TODO”
On 11-07-30 9:26 AM, Bill Davidsen wrote: get-funky.dig wrote: I'm afraid... seeing this concerns me. Please don't let Seamonkey become Firefox's “red-headed-stepchild”. Please let us not suffer the nonsensical patterns of late from that cr*p-factory (i.e. paraphrased, following more the Update Schedule, and borrowed nomenclature; updates scheme of Google Chrome) for the In-Kids' Club. The reason Chrome can run that way is that Google has resources to provide fixes in parallel with features. Mozilla seems to have decided to go to a mostly new features resource allocation (I say seems, based on what's released). SM lacks the resources to do that, when new features take 100% of the resources there's little effort put into bug fixes. The project is allowed to exist but treated like a charity, from what I see. Note that I am not inside, I just read the endless posts from SM people saying we don't have the resources to do that. Which is why users can't code stuff themselves and get it into the SM releases, accepting a feature would mean maintaining it forever. The changelog for the latest release can be found at http://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/seamonkey2.2/changes. There are plenty of bug fixes. -- Chris Ilias http://ilias.ca Mailing list/Newsgroup moderator ___ support-seamonkey mailing list support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
Re: SM 2.3 Changelog
On Saturday, July 30, 2011 07:19:39 AM Jens Hatlak wrote: Bill Davidsen wrote: I'm a fan of feature release followed by n (n=1) bug fix releases, so you get a usable version fairly often, like stability releases for the Linux kernel, that kind of thing. Me too, but as I explained in some other post, we don't have much of a choice anymore for the most part. As far as the address book breakage is concerned: We could have done a minor version update for that if we had found the issue earlier (the breakage on the development branch, trunk, was known and much larger, but the release branch dd issue was unknown) *and* had a reviewed (!) fix in hand. The fix that I'm talking about has only been finished about a week ago, in time for SM 2.3, which is not too far off anymore (currently in beta), so releasing a 2.2.1 at this point doesn't make much sense. The fact that 2.2, with broken address book, was not considered a brown bag release and quickly followed by 2.2.1 indicates that quantity is more important than quality. 2.2 was rushed, so much is true. I know SM uses some shared TBird code, the one person I know who uses TBird tells me address book is still broken in the nightly she tried. Sigh. I don't think that's true. The TB developers made a change that broke us (because we were missing a part on our side), not the other way around. I'm grateful for the work people do, but I think the whole Mozilla effort has lost its way. It feels as if Firefox is the only thing which still gets QA resources and fixes in a timely manner. 90% true. The other 10% is for TB. [Note: IMO] And IIRC the fixes in SM address book were rejected for TBird, so it would have to be maintained in SM long term. Again, I think you got something wrong there. Greetings, Jens Did they fix the export problems with addressbook? When I export a distrution list it exports the whole addressbook instead. It also drops some of the contacts and a blank field appears to to filled with the next field in order. -- Russ ___ support-seamonkey mailing list support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
SM 2.3 Changelog
TODO I'm afraid it concerns me to see TODO as a changelog: 2.2 to 2.3 Upgrade data. This curmudgeon is displeased and wary of the FF camp. As a user since Mosaic, it's difficult to find the proper description so I'll settle to say, I find it insulting to read of FF Update schedules should mirror that of Google-Chrome while that implementation manifests in a confused, likely unnerved user base. Please do not let that influence manifest likewise in Seamonkey. TODO: Best wishes... :wink: Post Script: please disregard any apparent duplicate post;topic of this nature, moments earlier. As advised by a Google Groups warning of taking a long time to process which appeared several minutes later (while the post itself did not appear, in accordance), I've posted again. Post Post Script: Best Wishes ___ support-seamonkey mailing list support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
SM 2.3 Changelog: “TODO”
I'm afraid... seeing this concerns me. Please don't let Seamonkey become Firefox's “red-headed-stepchild”. Please let us not suffer the nonsensical patterns of late from that cr*p-factory (i.e. paraphrased, following more the Update Schedule, and borrowed nomenclature; updates scheme of Google Chrome) for the In-Kids' Club. The kid in me likes the sugary side, while the curmudgeon in me actually posts topics. TODO: Best wishes. ___ support-seamonkey mailing list support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
Re: SM 2.3 Changelog
get-funky.dig schrieb: I'm afraid it concerns me to see TODO as a changelog: 2.2 to 2.3 Upgrade data. That's because we're all volunteers and Jens didn't have time yet to write up everything that has been changed. If you want things to be done more professionally or faster, please offer your help. The whole SeaMonkey team only works on all this in their free time only. Robert Kaiser -- Note that any statements of mine - no matter how passionate - are never meant to be offensive but very often as food for thought or possible arguments that we as a community should think about. And most of the time, I even appreciate irony and fun! :) ___ support-seamonkey mailing list support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
Re: SM 2.3 Changelog
On 7/28/11 1:34 AM, get-funky.dig wrote [in part]: This curmudgeon is displeased and wary of the FF camp. As a user since Mosaic, it's difficult to find the proper description so I'll settle to say, I find it insulting to read of FF Update schedules should mirror that of Google-Chrome while that implementation manifests in a confused, likely unnerved user base. That is sometimes called lemming behavior, which might be appropriate in this case. After all, the legend is that lemmings follow each other off a cliff, into the ocean, and to their deaths. As mothers have been saying forever, If your friends want to jump off a building, would you? -- David E. Ross http://www.rossde.com/ On occasion, I might filter and ignore all newsgroup messages posted through GoogleGroups via Google's G2/1.0 user agent because of spam from that source. ___ support-seamonkey mailing list support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
Re: SM 2.3 Changelog
David E. Ross schrieb: That is sometimes called lemming behavior, which might be appropriate in this case. After all, the legend is that lemmings follow each other off a cliff, into the ocean, and to their deaths. You mean Firefox will die just as Chrome has and SeaMonkey has before? Robert Kaiser -- Note that any statements of mine - no matter how passionate - are never meant to be offensive but very often as food for thought or possible arguments that we as a community should think about. And most of the time, I even appreciate irony and fun! :) ___ support-seamonkey mailing list support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
