Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!purdue!spaf From: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: News 3.0 Message-ID: <4378@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Date: 20 Jun 88 14:21:02 GMT References: <4460@killer.uucp> <11271@steinmetz.ge.com> <4751@hoptoad.uucp> Sender: news@cs.purdue.EDU Reply-To: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University Lines: 33 In article <4751@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: >eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) wrote: >> I think I'm ready for release, and am just polishing at this point... >> But I'm waiting on the NNTP and NFS support changes... >> I guess I have to set myself a deadline. I'll ship what I have August 1st. >> If that's missing NNTP/NFS code, that'll just have to do; it can be a patch. > >Last I talked with him, News 3.0 was running on about 5 machines, TOTAL. >It's only running in production on ONE -- snark, Eric's machine. If John's numbers are even close to correct, then I am in 100% agreement with his recommendations. I will not install (or even recommend) any software that hasn't gone through some kind of shakedown testing, no matter who (or what!) writes it. The machines on the net represent dozens of Unix variants and dozens of machine types. The release needs to be tested and confirmed on a large subset of those combinations. If the software is released without test and contains flaws, then after it breaks enough time it will get such a bad reputation no one will ever want to try it again. Do some proper testing, Eric. Find at least one each Alpha test involving: a BSD site, a System V.3 site, a System III site (?), a SunOS site, an Ultrix site, a Xenix site, an HP-UX site, a Vax site, a Pyramid site, a Sun 4 site, a 3B2 site, and a Sequent site. Then go into Beta test with at least 20 or 30 sites, perhaps an open Beta test. -- Gene Spafford NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center, Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu uucp: ...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf