Re: Re: 4.0.6 (fwd)

At 17:29 2/5/2001, Sascha Schumann wrote:

On Wed, 2 May 2001, Zeev Suraski wrote: The question is, if you think people will actually download the RC in order to test it (as opposed to using it) - why won't they join the QA team?

    Their job description might list "test new software releases
    before putting them into production," and not "join the PHP
    QA team."

"Testing new software releases before putting them into production" is pretty much a one sentence description of what 'Quality Assurance' is.

Joining the QA team for downloading a simple

    pre-release sounds a bit too much bureaucratic.

    And just to give an example.  In the past, I've installed
    various pre-releases of the Linux kernel.  If something
    broke, I reported it.  But I don't think I would have ever
    joined a Linux QA team.  Enabling more people to test RCs on
    a wider range of systems will hopefully produce more feedback
    and hence increase the quality of the release process.

I don't seem to recall Linux publishing far-reaching announcements about -pre versions. If you walked around the development mailing lists or the behind-the-scene web sites, you could hear about it, much like you can with PHP today. Zeev