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From: RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Scheifler)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Comment on Release Notes for X Version 11 Release 1
Message-ID: <870919095159.9.RWS@KILLINGTON.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: Sat, 19-Sep-87 09:51:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: KILLINGT.870919095159.9.RWS
Posted: Sat Sep 19 09:51:00 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Sep-87 15:31:21 EDT
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If you look at the list of contributors, you will discover that V11R1
was a rather major public undertaking.  Now, reflect on that, and
realize that not all companies out there were contributing to the public
effort, and that even those companies that were certainly didn't expend
all of their energies in the public arena.  Then think about a snowball
rolling down a mountainside, and little MIT standing half way down
thinking about whether to try and stop the snowball.  It just wasn't
sensible.  There are enough companies out there, sinking enough time
into it, fixing bugs and creating applications independent of MIT, and
in some cases writing their entire systems from scratch.  At some point
we had to say "OK, you can go to product now".  That time had come.  The
protocol and the major interfaces are in good shape.  Sure, there are
lots of rough edges on the code, and a fair number of stupid bugs.  The
stupic bugs will get fixed quickly, we'll let you know about them ASAP
in most cases, and the rough edges will smooth in time.  The next
release, in December or January, will be a lot more polished.  However,
we were getting >1000 mail message a week, we had someone working full
time just on trying to empty out someone else's mailbox, we were getting
dozens of phone calls a day, people pleading with us for "bits, any
bits", pleading for beta test access two days before the release, etc.
Better to just get it out there.  Better to have people complain that
mumble dumps core on a color Sun, rather than have them continue to
complain that X10 doesn't do splines on a Sun.  This release is not
Godlike; the protocol and library interfaces are hopefully like that,
but the Sample Server should be viewed as just a sample, not as a
Reference Implementation.