[Qgis-developer] release of 1.7

[Markus Neteler]

Ciao Paolo, all,

I am loosely following the list (sometimes) but found this one
rather striking:

>From <jr.morreale at enoreth.net>
> On Tue, 31 May 2011 09:30:25 +0200, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
>>
>> Hi all.
>> Am I the only one to feel uncomfortable releasing 1.7 with 60 bugs
>> classified as blocking?

Me as a QGIS user would feel VERY uncomfortable with an
unstable 1.7 version being released.

Myself, I manage the GRASS GIS release since 1997 and can for sure
confirm that selecting the release date is difficult. But I also learned that
one does not gain anything when releasing too buggy software.

>> https://trac.osgeo.org/qgis/report/16
>> IMVHO we should examine them, and either reclassify them or solve them
>> before release. My feeling is that 1.7 at this stage has significantly more
>> issues than most previous versions, and could be disappointing for many of
>> our users.

It will just send the users away to other, more stable FOSSGIS.
That's all.

>> I hope to be wrong, of course.

You are perfectly right.

>> All the best.
>
> I share your concern but no one has actually the time or manpower to solve
> these bugs, and to be honest I don't think that postponing the release any
> longer will improve the situation.

IMHO you underestimate the important point for FOSS(GIS) that we need
to aim at quality and stability, not the low price. Postponing releases is
common and usually motivated. Happens in the proprietary world, too.

> This release has enough good points to
> compensate, I hope all this shiny stuff will blind the users enough so they
> don't see the little problems.

If QGIS crashes several times in a row, I will tend to abandon it as a user.

Recently I had to downgrade (like other colleagues I know) to QGIS 1.5
since 1.6 was unusable for me. And if QGIS 1.7 is even worse (I stopped
trying trunk which I used to do elsewhere), I will not even try to install it.
Sorry if that sounds harsh but I start to no agree much with the apparent
QGIS' policy of "we-release-with-most-features-possible-but-with-low-stability"
which impacts more and more the recent QGIS releases.
Please note that I (happily) followQGIS since V 0.x.

A plea: Please don't overload QGIS with new features at the cost of even
destabilizing the existing good material.

> If corporate users want a bug-free release,

Yes.

> they'll have to invest in maintaining it.

No. At least it is not that easy. A code base needs to be maintained. See also
my posting:
"[Qgis-psc] A plea for backporting"
http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-psc/2011-February/000740.html

> Some institutes I know are already lurking on this list and
> I hope they will be able to push this kind of effort trough their hierarchy,
> I'll also looking forward a big announcement in the coming week.
>
> So +1 for release

>From a "poor" user a strong -1. Of course I cannot vote here :-)

Cheers & sorry for being that direct,

Markus

-- 
Markus Neteler
http://gis.cri.fmach.it
http://grass.osgeo.org