'Community Beta' has lost its way

[Bernard Devlin]

Bill, I refer you to your email of 20th October 2006:

> 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. And I just don't feel that it's worthwhile. I  
> haven't
> seen action on other serious bugs, and I haven't seen the kind of  
> quality
> that suggests even casual inspection on the part of Rev's release  
> team.

That's exactly how I feel.  Only the difference is that you now bear  
responsibility with regard to this.  Bug 3196 went through the proper  
bug-reporting procedure (and in fact also had duplicate postings).

I cannot understand how this old, blocker-level bug is still in the  
Release Candidate, nor can I understand how Rev's Quality Control  
manager does not visit  the Community Beta Forum.  Maybe that forum  
would have more activity if people actually saw that you visited it  
regularly.  Might I suggest that you post an announcement there  
saying that people should email you directly instead of wasting their  
time in that forum?   Mind you, I did email you directly twice, and  
it made no difference to this bug's status.

You might also remember saying last year in your lengthy complaints  
about Rev's bugginess:

> I have filed a couple reports on Rev bugs and I promised I
> would file a couple more about the more easily described problems I
> outlined. However, what I put into a product has a lot to do with  
> how well I
> think the feedback will be received and acted upon. People don't  
> talk to
> brick walls, unless they're insane.

[Bill Marriott, "Re: Bill's Boycott - was Open Letter to Rev: Quality  
Is Job #1	(Vista Install)", 21st October, 2006)

Well, I feel I've been talking to a brick wall about this bug for the  
past few weeks.  I had no idea if my experience was unusual, so  
that's why I wrote to the user list - but first I tried to use the  
official bug-reporting channels.

 From what you are saying, I must be in a minority.  In one sense,  
I'm glad to hear that.  On several occasions I've suggested that  
there be  a list of the bugs that were fixed on each iteration of the  
beta cycle.  That would have enabled people to see that even if bugs  
that concerned them were going unfixed, that other bugs were still  
being fixed.

Each time I downloaded the beta, uninstalled the old version,  
installed the new version, then I would run my tests to see if bug  
3196 had been fixed (even though it wasn't listed in any of the  
accompanying "Change Log.txt" files).  Each time I'd be  
disappointed.  Eventually it dawned on me that it wasn't going to get  
fixed.  When I saw it was still there in the Release Candidate, and  
there was no response from anyone at runrev.com about my warnings, I  
realised something was seriously awry.

So as far as I'm concerned the Community Beta has clearly lost its  
way.  It promised to focus on removing serious bugs and introducing  
the long-awaited Linux version.  Instead serious, documented bugs  
have been allowed into the Release Candidate, the Linux version has  
been pushed out, and the emphasis seems to have turned to introducing  
new features.

You can harp on about the incorporation of the Altuit products, but  
they were not initially part of the Community Beta.  That's a red  
herring.  Of course those products have to be incorporated at some  
point - they were probably bought as a band-aid to give Rev added- 
value, whilst your attempted consumer revolt over bugs was managed.   
Since the Altuit externals had obviously been working fine for  
Altuit's customers, there was no need that they be seamlessly  
introduced in this Beta cycle.

Remember: Quality is Job #1


Bernard