Professionalism in the development version (was Re: Artwork shuffle?)

[Eric Dunbar]

On 16/04/06, Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> -> sounder.
>
> On Sun, 2006-04-16 at 18:15 -0400, Ivan Krstic wrote:
> > Matthew East wrote:
> > > Everyone using it knows there is some
> > > element of risk in using it, but if we are going to be _this_ extreme
> > > about discouraging people from using it, then we are not going to get
> > > many testers, and the OS will suck more.
> >
> > Extreme? I spoke about the operating system eating chocolate, for crying
> > out loud.
>
> Not only, you also said "wipe your partition table". Sure, your tongue
> was partly in your cheek, but your view was clear: use the development
> version and the user loses a right to complain when things go wrong. I
> don't completely disagree, I was simply pointing out that an attitude of
> that sort will inevitably lead to fewer testers. More below:

> > I've found that there are broadly two types of people who test
> > development releases. The first are hacker types
>
> {snip}
>
> > The second is the impatient user type
>
> {snip}
>
> > No one wants to alienate the testing community -- they provide an
> > invaluable service to software development. But the second group has
> > unrealistic, mistaken expectations, and it's a waste of resources to
> > cater to them, alienation notwithstanding.
>
> The artwork question isn't really a good example, because it doesn't
> affect functionality at all. I had in mind more something like if
> openoffice.org writer broke, you'd expect it to be fixed quite quickly
> so people can carry on doing their regular work. However, I'm not at all
> surprised that people have complained about the artwork, because some
> people probably feel that it is an unnecessary eyesore. On the other
> hand, for most people, it will not be a big deal.

My apologies if this has been discussed earlier in this thread:

Here are my two cents worth, jumping into a discussion half-way through...

Having a thriving community of 'beta testers' is helpful to Ubuntu's
development, I'm sure but you do want that community to be well
informed and REMINDED about the dangers of running the development
'branch'. There are many 'bleeding edge' type users who do forget that
they are running development branches and instead expect stability.

The artwork in Ubuntu "developer/testing" branch _should_ be very
distinct and VERY cautionary. A login screen warning users that says
something like "Warning: this is a development version. DO NOT USE FOR
MISSION CRITICAL PURPOSES UNTIL FINAL RELEASE" and some desktop
artwork that makes a similar point are good preventative medicine.