having to help Rev (was: Re: Memory Leak on export png????)

[Björnke von Gierke]

On 21 Mar 2007, at 15:38, Dave wrote:

>
> On 20 Mar 2007, at 20:44, Stephen Barncard wrote:
>
>>>> Dave wrote:
>>>> RunRev can help by having Beta cycles whose length is more in 
>>>> keeping with industry norms, but the actual testing can't be done 
>>>> by them; there are just too many possibilities.
>>>
>>> I'd be happy to test it for them. How much are they paying?
>>
>> Unless you are trying to be funny, that sounds like you still don't 
>> get what Rev and this support community is about. Of course they 
>> can't pay you - why are you saying this? You know they only have x 
>> amount of resources - for me this support model really rocks - much 
>> better than other methods...
>
> Ok, if they don't have enough money to pay me now, then they can owe 
> it to me, and, *if* and when they do make lots of money they can pay 
> me then. How does that sound? I would charge £15.00 per hour, that's a 
> lot cheaper than they are advertising their consultancy services for! 
> Presumably the people at RunRev are getting paid a good salary or if 
> not are being rewarded in terms of shares and/or the promise of money 
> if and when they hit the big time.

I do agree with Dave's general direction (if not with the way he 
expresses it). We all pay RunRev money so they can produce a good 
product. It's not our duty nor our responsibility to do any testing on 
their behave. Actually it should be the other way around. If there's a 
bug we should get an easy accessible list of workarounds, until the bug 
is fixed with the next release of Rev, of course in addition to every 
Feature anyone requested.

On the other hand there's the open source approach. Users don't pay to 
use software, they commit time and effort to make the product better, 
so their own stuff based on the open source software gets better. Every 
user always puts equal effort into the open source foundation as into 
his own project. Bugs are fixed within minutes of their discovery, and 
every feature a user needs is implemented by that same user within even 
less time.

But alas this world is not perfection wonderland, bugs are hard to find 
and to track down, feature additions make a product complicated, and 
aggravate people who are used to the old way. RunRev is walking a 
middle ground here. In my opinion, it's crucial for their future to not 
adopt the worst of both the commercial way and the open source way, but 
to work out a methodic to get the strengths of both worlds. That is not 
easy for such a small company, but if they have a clear vision about 
how they want to interact with their customers, then it is possible.

Specifically, Bugzilla is a workaround for having no clue where bugs 
come from. Customers that find a bug are asked to make an effort to 
increase the product they paid for, and these bugs could linger for 
years due to time constrains. Unfortunately for everyone involved, 
that's how RunRev's software currently works.
The existing system does not rock in any way. It's a patch on reality 
forced upon everyone by legacy, money and priority management, not more 
and not less.

In hopes for a constructive discussion
Björnke von Gierke

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