Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!anu-news!list From: munnari!csc.anu.oz.au!gih900@UUNET.UU.NET (Geoff Huston) Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news Subject: RE: ANU-NEWS Version Control Message-ID: <8912200348.AA21427@uunet.uu.net> Date: 20 Dec 89 19:24:06 GMT Sender: ANU-NEWS Discussion Reply-To: Geoff Huston Lines: 78 >In the interest of maintaining my sanity (and hopefully, that of others >on the network), I've been wondering if we could work on better version >control for ANU-NEWS. > >Geoff has been doing a *wonderful* job and is continually fixing any >problems that each of us run into, but it's a full time job just trying >to keep up with the patches from my end!! I would really appreciate it >if a major version could be tested and released as a complete package, >with any fixes (yes, I know there are *always* fixes) numbered in some >order so that the person maintaining News at a given site (me, for example!) >would be aware if they missed anything. > >A good example of version control is PMDF, maintained by Ned Freed. >Each release is beta-tested before it's released (with new versions >approximately every six months) and then any patches after the actual >release are numbered according to which release they go with and which >patch they are. For example, the latest version is 3.1 and patches for >that version are 3.1-1, 3.1-2, etc. Ned posts these patches with the >patch number in the subject line so that everyone is aware that it is an >official patch that is actually going in the next release (as opposed to >a fix from someone else that isn't supported by the software). > >I know that a lot of schemes have been discussed for distributing >patches and I'm not proposing that any of this change, just that it >would be nice for News to be more stable, without a new version >appearing every one to two months. It seems that every time I get >around to installing a new version, three others have appeared after it, >and I can never find all the patches!! ;-) > >Thanks for the time to read this and consider it. I think that this >would greatly expand the use of ANU-NEWS and encourage more sites to >start using it. I quoted this in full as I feel that what is said here by Michelle is certainly important, and something I have been thinking about for some time. One of the crucial issues in highlighted in the difference between PMDF (and no doubt others of that ilk) and NEWS in that they (the authors/marketers,etc) charge real money to use the package...with the revenue so gained they have more manouverability in terms of actually spending time and resources in ensuring that the end-product is one which is painless to install and run over a range of operational environments... NEWS does not share the one critical component to make this happen - a revenue base. NEWS is a part-time (and unfunded) occupation largely performed by myself over the back end of a lousy dial-up from home in the wee small hours. As a consequence of this, the work on NEWS is largely code-based, and other aspects of the overall package (documentation, engineering of software releases, testing of various environments) happens more by accident and acute periods of self-imposed discipline than by actual planning and design. Because of this, (and the need for USENET connectivity into the VAX/VMS environment) NEWS is reaching a point where the pressures of the user base are starting to generate conflicts with the time available to meet user requirements: one option is to start charging ether an annual license fee, or a per-release license fee (or something similar), in order to create a funding base so that I can work on NEWS full time (or part-time, or whatever). Alternatively NEWS will continue in the current fashion of periodic releases of code from myself together with the associated components of documentation, etc lagging far behind the actual levels of code functionality. I'll throw these issues back to the newsgroup for further discussion - the essential question as I see it is that as a free piece of software for VMS, NEWS is going to remain in a somewhat chaotic state. If there is a requirement (or an expressed need) for a more packaged functionality, then the hard fact is that this will require money to fund, and as this is at the moment a 1 man part-time band operating from one of the more outreaching corners of the globe, commercialisation of NEWS is not an easy path to traverse. (And I must express the view that I would not sign off my intellectual rights to the software to a company which wished to commercialize the product without some form of consideration :-) ) comments? Geoff Huston