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

[Dave]

On 21 Mar 2007, at 15:17, Björnke von Gierke wrote:

>>
>> 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.
>

Actually we started the discussion at cross purposes I think. I was  
talking about first level soak (stress) testing in the development  
process before the code is checked in, before it goes to QA and *way*  
before it gets to beta stage.

> In hopes for a constructive discussion

Sounds good to me!

> Björnke von Gierke

There are more ways of paying for something than money!  Even if you  
only got a free T-Shirt or free hard copy of the manual it would be  
something. There really is no such thing as a free lunch.

Having said that, I really wouldn't mind doing the beta testing for  
free on a volunteer basis, but not as an expectation!

I signed up for the Beta Program a while back, but I heard nothing  
for months, then a short while ago I was contacted with the details,  
unfortunately I don't have enough time now. When I signed up I could  
have put aside a couple of hours a day.

All the Best
Dave