[maemo-developers] Extras-testing improvements

[From: Stefanos Harhalakis]

On Tuesday 09 of March 2010, Graham Cobb wrote:
> The community needs a place where **every** app passes through a very basic
>  QA to try to make sure it is safe and it is then available.  That is what
>  Extras is.

IMHO, that's not extras. Currently extras is the elite of maemo's software.

Explaining: Asking for 10 votes for each version of each application is 
something that I call paranoia in software development. For example: I've a 
fully optified app that works without problem, but will never be promoted to 
extras because there are not enough developers with interest in it (more 
specifically: women). But the audience of extras is very different and there 
would be interested audience if it were there.

What's the reasoning of asking 10 people to do the same thing? This is now 
popularity contest instead of a QA process. Popular apps among developers 
(techie guys) advance. Non-popular apps wait.

Assuming that the QA process is a serious process, asking 10 people to do the 
exact same thing isn't serious. If the check is performed correctly, you 
should need at most 2 persons. If the check if not performed correctly then 10 
is not enough.

I suggest you take a look at debian's method. Having a kind of maemo-
developers that act responsibly, certifying applications would be a good 
solution. Currently the vote of a person without any programming abilities is 
the same with a person's that can program and have performed the checks. 

The best solution IMHO would be for Nokia to have 1 or 2 people to do this job 
responsibly instead of relying on statistical methods. That would also be very 
good support of the community efforts and would boost software development. 
After all, the applications in extras is a big part of the (future) value of 
maemo/meego.