Ooops, we made Linus leave : (choices and punishment)

[Eli Wapniarski]

On Tuesday 27 January 2009 02:18:01 José Matos wrote:
> When was the last time that rpm failed on you?

Thankfully never.

> Clearly if the maintainer of rpm that is also the packager for Fedora has
> decided to release it for a stable version of Fedora why is he wrong?

Because it has not been deemed stable. With all due respect and release 
deadlines not withstanding. Look if it ain't stable it ain't stable. For what 
ever reason. Some minor feature or cross platform whatever.

> I have managed and released some projects where sometimes we kept the rc
> stage because there were problems in the windows port. Does that mean that
> we can not release it for Fedora because we want more tests on windows?

No. It means the version for Linux should be marked as stable and development 
should continue on the Windows port until it is stable. However. As usual, 
with caution. Instability in one area could mean a deeper underlying proble 
somewhere deep in the code that is difficult to dig out.

> Ignoring that developers only care about Fedora when developing software it
> is not what you thing but it is what you are implying, because for you
> stable means in the context of Fedora.

No.. Its not what I'm thinking at all. What I am trying to get across. Is that 
developers under the gun of deadline pressures should not give into the 
temptation of releasing when the product is not ready. Developers should not 
give into the temptation of releasing "good enough" software that they are not 
sure is stable and rely on users to do the qa. Regardless of whether the 
decision is intentional or a product of release pressures.

> You can not complain that 4.0.0 (deemed releasable by the developers) was
> beta because according to your previous comment 4.0.0 was "stable" (for
> some definition of stable). That means that we only trust the stable
> versions sometimes?

I'm not complaining about that it was deemed releasable. What I am complaining 
about (and not only about Fedora, but KDE as well) is that it released as a 
"stable development release" which was obscurred. And even currently while 
quite usuable. There are a lot of rough edges that push the use of more and 
more gtk apps. Konqueror being the main culprit. KDE still isn't KDE friendly 
so to speak.

> Surely I know that kde developers warned about 4.0.0 but I have seen other
> cases where that warning was not present.
>
> Notice also that different programs have different dependencies and using
> compatibility versions is not an answer, or else the complexity of the
> system would grow up quite easily.

That may be true... But like I said... If it ain't stable. It ain't stable. 
And if there is no way to go back. Then sorry -- We will serve no wine before 
its time -- makes a lot of sense.

> The stability problem is not easy and there are no silver bullets but to
> judge a package just by its release number is not a proof of that.

No.. maybe to the packager. But to the average user it is a good indication. 
What other information does a user have to go on.

> > Like I said... Bleeding Edge good. Just plain bleeding very bad. :).
> >
> > Eli
>
> --
> José Abílio
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