[GRASS5] GRASS development model Was: A private conversation
mlennert at club.worldonline.be
mlennert at club.worldonline.be
Mon Feb 19 09:10:05 EST 2001
First of all I'm glad that this discussion is happening in the open, since I
believe that it concerns everyone.
I have to agree with Markus on what he said about Grass5 being a beta version.
Noone has ever claimed something else and to me beta has always meant "use at
your own risk".
I personally use Grass in my everyday work, and I am very happy with the CVS
system which allows me to very quickly implement changes when they interest
me. But I also know that I won't use the very latest version for critical
work. I wait for a week or so to see if there are no serious problems (such as
the make clean in beta10). I will then happily test that version (which
generally gives me nice new features), and because of CVS I can very easily
get corrections or improvements to any module seperately. And, yes, sometimes
it can happen that someone just committed a change before I do my update. But
the probability of this being fatal is quite low, and in any case, I'm not
obliged to update the entire Grass tree, but can limit to the modules I know I
want to update.
Now if users are defined as being people who want to use the newest features
but in a stable environment without any risk, ideally with the software
packaged in the easiest form possible, I can understand Richard's point of
view, and I agree, as I think everyone does, that there has to be a feature
freeze at one point. But I do believe that the force of OpenSource is just
that: no market pressure to oblige the development team to bring out the next
version. It is exactly this pressure that creates the bugs !
As the development team is very creative, there will always and constantly be
new ideas. And since, as far as I understand, most developpers are also users,
they want them implemented. I often want them implemented, and am very happy
they are. As I've said, I'm using Grass5beta11 (CVS) on a daily basis and
would not want to miss features such as the click-closing of a monitor (which
gives not only more comfort, but for me more stability) and the latest
improvements Radim has brought into ps.map. I know I'm using a beta version,
and that's ok, I don't care as long I can do the work I want to do. But as I
said above, I use it at my own risk.
Software development, and open source especially, is always subject to debate
between the "cathedral and the bazar". Yes, sometimes, it helps to have
someone say stop, let's do it now, but generally I think it is the dynamic
process of ongoing development as a result of usage that makes the best
programs. And who defines when is the right moment to say stop, and on what
criteria ? Is the new socket code important enough to wait, yes or no. Richard
asks Markus to be the one to decide. Well, he has and he has decided that it
is important enough. I respect this decision.
Moritz
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