On Thu, 2006-01-19 at 03:32, Christofer C. Bell wrote:
I'm content to move to FC5, but it's not even released yet, and that is the point of the argument.
The point is that you are supposed to be testing the test releases, otherwise they don't accomplish anything.
This is completely disingenuous. If the only "point" is to do nothing other than test "testing" versions, then there is no "point" to having a "release" version.
If no one tests the testing version, nothing will change between it and the release version.
The test releases *do* accomplish something, they are tested by those people interested in *testing* them.
Ummm, yeah - I'll bet there are just a whole bunch of people out there whose favorite thing is to try to run software that probably won't work just so they can report bugs.
That's not everyone (in fact, it's a very small minority).
And that's a problem, because bugs don't get found until lots of people run the software under exactly the same conditions as they will in production and on all of the same hardware.
The full release versions are for "everyone else" (that's FC1, FC2, FC3, and FC3, note the lack of -test suffix). If it weren't for the users of release versions, all your development efforts and testing are nothing more than mental masturbation. The "point" is to get a released product into the hands of end users wanting to get work done with it.
That's not the point of the fedora project, although it has to be a side effect that keeps enough people using it. When all the problems that can be fixed in a version have been fixed, the project isn't accomplishing anything until the next release.