2.5 Release Candidate 1

[Alex Tweedly]

At 20:16 27/08/2004 -0400, yoy wrote:

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Kevin Miller" <kevin at runrev.com>
>Subject: 2.5 Release Candidate 1
>
>
> > At this time we are no longer able to respond to minor glitches or
> > annoyances reported.  This is because we must change as little as possible
> > in any rebuild to ensure we don't introduce any new issues.
>
>C'mon! That's an outright POS comment.
>
>Establish a known bugged FC???

No, in fact that's outright common sense. Introducing changes to software 
carries a risk of unintended consequences - even with the best automated 
testing methods around, you can't afford to risk making unnecessary changes 
at the last minute. If you find a major problem, you must fix it; if you 
find a serious or moderate problem, you have to make judgement - that's why 
software development managers gets paid big bucks; but if you find a minor 
annoyance you must not fix it.

As the release date gets closer, you have to "throttle down" on introducing 
changes to minor bugs and annoyances. I don't know a software company that 
doesn't use some form of this "throttling" technique as it gets to 
final  release of large products. You can do it differently for smaller 
products, where the predictability of unintended consequences is orders of 
magnitude smaller - but not for medium or large products, and I think Rev 
must be big enough to qualify for that category.

-- Alex.