[Opensim-dev] Beta?

[Frank Nichols]

The problem I see is that there are a lot of grids forming - people and
universities using OS and general "production" uses being made, all the
while we are calling it Alpha. Alpha gives great deniability and the
ability to say - don't use this in a production system. The reality is that
people are. So...

I suggest it is time (what about 7 years now?) that we/someone writes a
specification that basically documents what OS is today, and call that the
"spec" which then becomes maintained. Then move the code to Beta - meaning
that it implements the specification but has bugs. Then we can focus on
fixing the bugs so the spec "works" and adding new features to the spec
that the dev's want to add. That way users will be able to do a little more
planning than they can today.

I expect it will take a while to write a spec, so maybe 0.9 would be a good
goal to shoot for going beta?


On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 7:34 PM, Shaun T. Erickson <ste at smxy.org> wrote:

> From opensim-dev IRC chat, last September 25th (edited to leave out
> non-pertinent chatter):
>
> [17:24] <diva> justincc, ... are you ok with tagging this release as beta?
> [17:26] <justincc> diva: no - with these kinds of issues I'm unhappy with
> even not saying it's alpha. ...
> [17:26] <nebadon> we should probably mark a beta as 0.8
> [17:26] <nebadon> and not 0.7.6
> [17:27] <justincc> nebadon: beta is meaningless here - opensim is never
> going to be feature complete
> [17:28] <nebadon> I am not saying that is what we should definitively do,
> but say we were going to do that I think it should be 0.8 for the beta, and
> I agree I dont think beta should happen right now
> [17:28] <smxy> It could be feature complete if there were more devs
> working on it.
> [17:29] <nebadon> while things have improved considerably
> [17:29] <nebadon> there is still a ton of broken stuff
> [17:29] <frnic> smxy, you need to have a specification to be feature
> complete.
> [17:29] <frnic> It is an evolving project, so doesn't have a specification.
> [17:30] <diva> and who ever said that the tag "beta" is associated with
> "feature complete"?
> [17:30] <frnic> industry general definition is beta is feature complete,
> bay be buggy.
> [17:30] <nebadon> well ya thats true, i dont think that either, i know i
> didnt say that :)
> [17:30] <lkalif> feature complete is nonsense some middle managers
> invented in the late 20th century
> [17:30] <frnic> I was a project manager for 30 years, I think I know that
> muchg - lol
> [17:30] <nebadon> haha
> [17:31] <AllenKerensky> ... just stick with revision #s and call some of
> the milestones heh
> [17:31] <lkalif> it has long been obsoleted and put to rest where it
> belongs
> [17:31] <nebadon> well one thing I would like to see happen before we go
> beta is have BulletSim be the default physics engine
> [17:31] <nebadon> and also work a bit better than it does now
> [17:31] <diva> that's not how it's used out there. It's used to denote
> "this is pretty good, but it still has issues".
>
> To my knowledge, and according to my logs (which are not 100% complete),
> there's been no talk of this since, and 0.8.0 is on Release Candidate 3 and
> about to be released.
>
> So, when might OpenSim move to a beta status, and would it be a
> meaningless tag, as Justin claimed, or actually signify something and be a
> real milestone for the project?
>
> -ste
>
> (AKA Smxy (IRC) & Shaun Emerald (in-world))
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