Re: GNOME 0.27 is released

[Jeff Steele <steele cheesesteak physics drexel edu>]

On Wed, 19 Aug 1998, Michael Fulbright wrote:

> We don't want the general public trying out the 0.2x series because there
> is no QA in them at all.

A couple of other posts seem to echo this sentiment. I'm not sure I
agree, but that depends on what is meant by "general public".  I
certainly wouldn't consider the /. readership to be general public,
for example, and yet that seems to be who is being referred to.
Certainly, as Dr, Mike has mentioned in other postings, it should be
made extremely clear what releases are purported to be stable-ish and
which ones are use-at-your-own-peril. But as long as that distinction
is made clear, I'd hate to see any efforts to dissuade folks who are
curious from giving the latest tarballs a go.

	Although I'm not (yet, anyway) doing any active
development/debugging, I've been tinkering around with GNOME and
learning what it's got, what's missing, what's being tossed around by
developers, what GNOME is all about (not to mention CVS, aoutoconf,
automake, etc. etc.)  And I've definitely hit a few snags.  Because I
was able to read some (perhaps very elementary, perhaps oft-repeated)
queries on this list, I've been able to get things more-or-less
working.  Without this kind of support, I probably would have just
bailed.  I think there is a tremendous amount of this kind of
excitement about GNOME out there (here) in the general public, and
that's a Good Thing.  Obviously, GNOME can't develop without developers.
But if it's going to truly succeed it also needs 

#if defined(SOCIALIST)
  to have its roots in the common people.
#else 
  to have broad-based marketing and service infrastructures.
#endif

The goal isn't just to have good code, it's to have good code that is
used and supported by a large, loyal base of knowledgable users.  And
the best way to cultivate that base is to invite people to be a part
of the process in any way that they feel ready.  Today's clueless
newbie is tomorrow's expert.

Jeff