[wp-hackers] Differentiating nightlies and betas

[Carthik Sharma]

Let us not all forget that this is an Open Source tool, referring to
the fact that the source code should be easily available to whoever
needs it, with minimal restrictions.

I am sure that once we start releasing regularly and frequently, most
of the problems we saw in the pre-1.5 period will be solved. Isn't
"Release often and freely" (or some such) one the reasons why Linux
has been so successful. I am sorry if my reference seems inapproriate
to some, but the Linux kernel development process seems to be a good
representation for what's good about open source development. Had it
not been easy to obtain the source, and submit patches, and had the
project not been so open and free about delegating responsibility,
would it still have been the success it has been?

WordPress has seen tremendous growth, and with growth comes growing
pains. A lot of the new users (as well as some of the old crowd) have
a lot to offer, and let us not hold back on this. Nightlies are not
friendly for the average end user, but if they want to break their
boxes, who are we to stop them? We should stop feeling "guilty" or
"responsible" for their problems, and use whatever inputs we get from
them, and gently remind them that nightlies are not the best option
out there.

Carthik.

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:00:09 -0500, Jeremiah Zabal <miahzmiahz at gmail.com> wrote:
> How about:
> To download nightlies, you have to join the (wp-nightlies?) list.
> When you join, you get sent the FTP password.  And you're already
> subscribed to the support network.
> 
> 
> On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 23:46:50 -0500, Dave Cohen <cohen.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why don't we come up with a system, where we have official testers.  I
> > would say that people submit their criteria to become an official
> > tester, then have a designated group that goes through each person's
> > criteria to determine whether or not they should have access to
> > nightly builds.  I think people would eat this up, the ability to be
> > dubbed an official Wordpress tester would be pretty cool to many
> > people.
> >
> > Also, we could do weekly public builds that would be available to the
> > general public, so say on Sunday have a cron job run that copies that
> > days nightly into a public folder available for general use.  This
> > would also allow for the official testers to be more of a first
> > responder for the forums.  The official testers would have already
> > seen the changes and be prepared to help out.
> >
> > I know this all amounts to more work for everyone initially, but I
> > think a system like this or similar would be the best of both worlds.
> >
> > Just my .02