[Opensim-dev] Beta?

[Tom]

I know this is an old subject. Feature complete is feature complete for a particular release not for evermore. The point of a new releases is that they will contain new new features, changes etc. or else why bother with a new release.  

Alpha and beta are normally related to levels of testing e.g. internal inhouse testing (alpha), released to the wider world ( beta) for a period of time before  release. It gives an indication of the reliability and stability. Testing, especially beta testing can in some systems may be a judgement that a high level of stability has been achieved. This is as applicable to iterative development cycles as any others. The mere fact that people have been using this successfully in a production environment for so long suggests to me that the core of OpenSim is already stable and sufficiently bug free enough to be used in these environments. 

By saying it is alpha you are doing yourselves and all the core developers a great disservice. You are all better than should be proud of your achievements.

Alpha software is saying "use with great care" it may be very buggy.  OpenSim is far better than that.   By being permanently at alpha (after 7 years it seems so) it is also obscuring from users what can and cannot be used safely. Are you really saying to users it is not fit to use after 7 years of development? Even beta is excessively cautious.

I suggest that your use of alpha and beta is out of sync with the industry norm and is hence misleading users. If you apply the OpenSim standards would you still consider all the viewer code alpha, second life alpha?

I am talking as someone with 15 years IT experience in software development and configuration management. 

Tom Willans BSc(Hons) MBCS CITP
Chartered IT Professional


On 12 Jun 2014, at 01:31, Frank Nichols <j.frank.nichols at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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