Renaming the next beta to alpha2?

[Luciano Montanaro]

On domenica 17 giugno 2007, Matt Rogers wrote:
> On Jun 16, 2007, at 8:31 PM, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > On Sunday 17 June 2007, tomalbers at kde.nl wrote:
> >> ok, the question is if we can deliver what a user expects from a
> >> beta, a
> >> complete desktop with some small bugs.
> >
> > give me a moment to recover from laughing.
> >
> > whew.. ok. so. the question is whether the user expectations are
> > unrealistic
> > and we don't care or whether we should try and pander to these
> > expectations.
>
> Ok, so what about our expectations as developers? What do we think a
> beta should be? Have we met our own expectations?
>

Pesonally, I think of a beta as software that has most things in place, and 
while unfinished, it is at least somewhat funcional.

I've not built everything in KDE4 yet; for what I've seen, kdelibs could 
qualify as a beta, along with most kdegames... and kdegraphics too.

Kdebase however is not even near beta quality. Some applications mostly work - 
konsole and kwin basically. The rest of kdebase functionality is missing 
however. KDesktop and Kickere are out, without a working substitute -- or is 
it a problem with my build? There is no way to configure things (well, you 
can still use kcmshell for most things) and the filemanager(s?) does not 
work.

I understand we need user feedback for further development, but functionality 
should be there for users to test...

So unless major changes are going in in the next week, I think labelling next 
release as a beta is counterproductive.

Luciano


-- 
Luciano Montanaro //
                \X/ mikelima at cirulla.net