Re: 8.5 release timetable, again

* Andrew Dunstan (andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net) wrote:
> Actually, what I had in mind was getting people to run their
> applications etc. in some non-production environment on the beta. I
> talked to a client today and he said "sure, we have several development
> environments and we can put one or two on the beta and then let the
> developers just do their thing on it." Testing the things we know about
> is in a way less important than making sure nothing else got broken.

I agree entirely with Andrew here- what we need are a set of users who
would be willing to run their actual applications against a beta release
in a testing environment. The Beta-Mom position would be working with
some list of users who've volunteered to do that; prodding them when a
new beta comes out, poking them for feedback, working with them on
issues they run into, etc.

The other possible group of users are those who are interested and
willing to beta-test actual new external-facing features. That'd be
great to have as well, but I don't believe is as important. New
features having bugs are a much smaller impact, overall, than bugs which
have been introduced in existing code-paths due to changes.

Thanks,

Stephen