Open Letter to Rev: Quality Is Job #1

[Dar Scott]

On Oct 20, 2006, at 2:38 AM, Bill Marriott wrote:

> Some of you will say, "Bill it would be much more productive if you  
> filed
> all this in Bugzilla." Well, I'm all for contributing to the  
> community. But
> it takes time and effort to file a decent bug report. You need to have
> something reproducible, supply sample files, write it up properly,  
> etc. This
> is no trivial task.

There are a couple things folks might consider when wanting to  
contribute to the community by making bug reports but are prudent  
about how much time is spent in that.

One is focus.  One can concentrate on areas of greatest concern,  
areas where one has to do the analysis for other reasons, or areas of  
expertise or interest.  This area of focus can also be one where you  
can help others in discussion.

The other is discussion before making the report.  Peers can help us  
weed out cockpit errors, find the scope, and even identify the nature  
of the problem.  Peers can also suggest workarounds.  You might then  
have all you need to make a report.  You might find a fellow  
Revolutionary better equipped to make the report.

> So, when YOU demonstrate
> some good faith -- releasing a reasonably robust product, and  
> committing to
> free bug fixes -- then perhaps I will work as your unpaid Quality  
> Assurance
> Engineer.

I see good faith as the commitment to fixing bugs.  For lots of  
reasons, including, no doubt, the multi-platform nature, bug fix  
releases are hard to separate from feature releases.  Even so, I do  
think that a longer update period for the Studio users would put  
RunRev in better light.  RunRev as well as Revolution users have  
benefited from the many hours user-developers have given to  
identifying bugs and characterizing Revolution in general.  I gain  
because many have worked long hours to critically analyze parts of  
Revolution and RunRev has said it will try to fix bugs.

Dar