[maemo-developers] maemo Bug Jar #7

[From: josh.soref at nokia.com]

Frederic Crozat wrote:
> Remember that most people are not used to Nokia policy to embargo any
> date (even estimate) regarding software (or hardware) release.

For simplicity's sake, I don't know when Diablo will be released.
I also didn't know when Chinook was going to be released (in fact, I
believe a number of end users got Chinook before engineers at Nokia
discovered/learned it was released).

Releasing is a management decision, whether that's an open decision or a
closed decision, and whether it's for an open, closed, or semi open
project, it's still that.

I also have absolutely no idea when Firefox 3 will be released.
And that's the open source project that I work on.

I don't have any idea when Safari 3.1.2 will be available, or IE8.

The only products that I know release dates for are date based products
(I can predict Ubuntu 8.04).

Nokia's products are generally seasonal. And they have some wiggle room.

The Mozilla view which I would hope people are familiar with is:

It'll ship when it's ready.
<http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=1179<
<http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/124630/firefox-we-caught-microsoft-asleep-a
t-the-wheel.html>
<http://blog.johnath.com/index.php/2007/09/07/gaming/#comment-1>
Kairo (one of the driving people behind SeaMonkey) writes: Only, ever,
ship when it's ready to be shipped, never before that point. 

> Except Quim has specifically requested those instructions to not be
> disclosed on this list or on the web and the "hole" in the update
> repository was closed for non "insiders" (or people who did the update
> before it was closed).

Regardless, it was discussed both here and there that it is possible to
retrieve the updates and that they're not simply vaporware.

OpenSolaris also lists fixes at bugs.opensolaris.org before they're
available anywhere (as it happens, they're date based, so a fix should
be in the next binary drop w/in 2 weeks unless it fails QA which happens
from time to time).

Similar behavior can be found with other open projects (netbeans comes
to mind, although I haven't worked w/ them in nearly a decade).

As for Apple and Google, you will find that they may or may not announce
a date for a product, and there can easily be a lag time between when
it's announced and when you can get it.

As for Kernel. If I'm using a Linux distribution, I know that just
because mm or someone has committed a fix to an upstream kernel doesn't
mean I'll instantly get that fix in my Linux distribution, in fact, for
maintenance distributions (centos 3, rhel), I may be forced to wait for
the time when I'm willing and able to upgrade to something newer. If I'm
using a non-stock Linux or a non stock compiler )embedded-arm,
codesourcery) then I'll probably have to wait for them to integrate the
fix into a new release, and then pick a time to upgrade.

If you aren't used to any of these things, then hrm... I dunno...

I'm certainly used to waiting. And whenever people tell me about
improvements, I'm happy, because it means that instead of bugging them
about X, I know that they're responsive and I can choose to bug them
about Y that they didn't know about.

This applies to Qt (I filed a bug against Qt, they confirmed it, I'm
still waiting for them to fix it) and Opera (I'm not sure how many bugs
I've filed their way) and Apple (I need to file a bug about iLife's iWeb
generating bad content).

Note that with Trolltech, if I'm told that they've fixed a bug in Qt,
and I'm using QtEmbedded (which I was at the time), then I have to wait
for them to backport it to QtE, or I have to wait for a new version of
QtE (and those lag a bit).

I really don't know of many groups who deliver software instantly... At
least, not good software.

FWIW, in Mozilla if someone says X is fixed, that just means there's a
code fix, it doesn't mean it has passed through all verification steps.
It could cause a regression and be backed out. As was written elsewhere
(by the original complainant), there's a risk in fixing things, and
perhaps it'll be backed out, or regress something else or .... Now I'm
not going to discourage people from using bleeding edge software, bug
reports based on the latest sources and binaries are always more welcome
than old stale versions. But I understand the reason people don't want
to upgrade (I rarely upgrade my software) and I would hope that people
understand that if they're afraid of using the latest prerelease, then
asking that the latest prerelease be released is at least a bit
ridiculous, changing the name from "alpha, may destroy your computer" to
"official" doesn't mean it won't destroy your computer.