'Community Beta' has lost its way

[Bernard Devlin]

The 2.7.5 Community Beta was launched with much fanfare.  Runrev was  
going to be doing things in a new way.

> We worked with Bill to immediately reinvigorate expectations on  
> quality:
>
> * Respond meaningfully to community concerns through official  
> Revolution venues like the Revolution Forums
> * Get fresh eyes looking at the product to truly “shake the tree”  
> and enable you to ship robust solutions based on 2.7.5
> * Get more users familiar with, and confident about BugZilla, the  
> community based feedback tool for reporting issues
> * Assist in developing a more meaningful, community-based beta process
>
> Revolution 2.7.5 - Free Update to 2.7.x Licensees
>
> The focus on Revolution 2.7.5 is on core issues such as setup and  
> install, crashing, IDE behavior, and stress testing. The new  
> version will also finally bring the newest Revolution to the Linux  
> platform.
>
> [..,]
>
> The most exciting news of all: Revolution 2.7.5 will be a free  
> update. If you had an active Revolution maintenance plan as of  
> February 1, 2006, or if you purchased any version of Revolution  
> 2.7, you will receive Revolution 2.7.5 at no charge.

[http://www.runrev.com/newsletter/november/issue13/newsletter1.php]

Well, first of all, we are all currently testing the 2.8.1 release.   
Fair enough - the numbering changed.  There's no Linux in this  
release.  If the timescale of the 2.7.5 beta process is anything to  
go by, maybe we are going to have to wait another 6 months to get the  
Linux version promised for the 2.7.x lifetime.

Secondly, it is not at all clear to me that the next release is going  
to be free (as promised in the the above newsletter).   I find it  
hard to believe that both 2.8.1 and 2.9 are going to be free.    
Originally 2.7.5 was going to be free - now it is not clear if it is  
2.8.1 or 2.9 that will be free, or maybe its both.   If it is not  
both, then I can see disappointment from those who thought they would  
get free versions, and if it is both, I can also see annoyance from  
those people who have continued to needlessly update their  
'maintenance plan'.  Either way this looks like its going to be bad  
PR for Runrev.

Thirdly, in my experience Runrev's responsiveness with regard to bug- 
reporting for this Beta is poor.  I tested the last three betas and  
there is an 18-month-old bug on OS X [http://quality.runrev.com/ 
qacenter/show_bug.cgi?id=3196].  I tried to draw as much attention as  
I could to this bug: I wrote to this list, Bill Marriott, the  
Community Beta forum, and even added a detailed comment to Bugzilla.   
But after several weeks, not a single reply from anyone connected  
with Runrev.

I'm assuming that I'm alone in my disappointment with this Community  
Beta.  This bug was a prime candidate to be fixed.  Instead, the beta  
has seemed to move its principal focus to the incorporation of the ex- 
Altuit products instead.  The shiny-new Community Beta process  
enjoins us to look for bugs, learn to use bugzilla and the Beta forum  
to report them, and then just ignores us.   Runrev really knows how  
to 'respond meaningfully' (the first bullet point in the list above).

Clearly this Community Beta has lost its way.  I should just get used  
to the fact that Runrev are constantly setting users up to be  
disappointed.  After waiting these past 6  months to see this bug be  
fixed, I've now absolutely no confidence that it is ever going to be  
fixed, without even any explanation from Runrev as to why its being  
ignored.   The ability for Rev to interact with other programs is one  
of my principal reasons for using Revolution, and if it only works on  
Windows and Linux then I might as well start looking at other tools  
and write-off my investment in Revolution.

Bernard