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From: bourguet@my-dejanews.com
Subject: Re: SGI GNAT Question? (Long)
Date: 1999/03/05
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In article <36DFA6FB.D3A2AD84@spam.com>,
  spamwithchipsplease@spam.com wrote:
> dewar@gnat.com wrote:
>
> > a) We don't want versions to be distributed publicly till
> > they are in good shape and installation glitch free,
>
> Strange that you inflict your "Beta" versions exclusively on your paying
> customers.

Have you already supported Beta version? From a developper point of view,
I understand very well the interest of limited circulation of beta version.
It is usually the way other free sofware developement works... The
restriction may be other than beeing a customer of a compagny, but there is
often a restriction or at least a strong incitation of not using the latest
unstable version or the snapshot if don't want to help coding. Having
numerous reports of bugs already fixed is not something helpfull. And
published versions tend to stick on a long time.

> I think the success of open source has been based on public
> releases feeding back to the developers bug reports.

I think the interest of a more open development is in the number of persons
ready to help in other ways than just bug reports and testing. ACT may be
perhaps underestimating this help, but I've no way to tell. And I know that
I'd be of no value for this.

> Having  run a
> GNU/linux system for 3 years, I like many others are use to "feature-rich"
> pre-releases.

That's your choice, not mine (I'm also using Linux but I tend to stick to a
release until there is something new I've a use for). And it is a different
problem than was is best for the development of the program.

-- Jean-Marc

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