[GRASS5] The status of 5.0

[Helena]

> I think we have to decide whether
>
> 1) to see Grass as primarily a free software project, which in my eyes entails
> a certain responsibility and awareness on the part of the user in the sense
> that she knows that software development is a neverending process, that
> software is buggy, that this is not a catastrophe, that there are people out
> there to help (Markus mentioned the fast response time to bugs in Grass),
> and that actually the user is a vital resource in the search for these bugs
> (and in defining the direction a project should go into). This does not mean
> we should release software that erases everything on the user's disk, or
> creates more work or hassle than not having it, but it means that we should
> enter into a dialog with the users about the status of the program.

I believe that with the resources that we have and in the environment we operate in

we should (and we are) the 1).
Most previous efforts to make GRASS more like what you suggest in the
first sentence of 2) have failed.

Helena

>
>
> 2) to see Grass as a service we provide for a large user base that doesn't
> want to know anything about our development problems and is only
> interested in a final product that should be as close to perfect as possible. In
> that case we should develop a more thorough testing routine which covers as
> much of Grass' functionalities as possible and as many different test cases
> as possible. One approach to this kind of test suite might be to collect all
> data that has made Grass fail and use it to test any new releases.
>
> These are just some simple thoughts in whatis more of a general project
> philosophy debate, but I do have the feeling that this (plus the problem of the
> work load (and necessary discipline) of trying to coordinate branches) is the
> basis of the discussion in this thread.
>
> Moritz
> _______________________________________________
> grass5 mailing list
> grass5 at grass.itc.it
> http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grass5