All,
Ron, K5DJ, and myself are re-arranging our responsibilities slightly. I am
now taking responsibility for getting WL releases beta tested. Anyone
reading this reflector over the past year or two is aware there has not been
a whole lot of new stuff to beta test. (Thank you for your patience). But we
now have some fixes and new features in the works (don't get too
excited--we're starting with stuff that is out of date or broken).
We have a list of people who used to do beta testing and they will continue
to receive the beta test notifications by email, but--as has happened to
me--people's priorities change and its time to update the list of people
that are willing and able to do some beta testing.
The features to be tested in 10.64 are networking and "installation".
Please send me an email if you would like to beta test. (If you are already
beta testing and have recently received emails from K5DJ announcing beta
test versions, send me an email anyway. I want your confirmation)
Some more details below...
Wayne, W5XD
A note about the networking changes.
I have been reading the reflector for these couple of years (even though you
haven't heard much from me) and am aware of all the reports. The fixes don't
make much difference on the screen. They are internal and came from a stress
test that I designed that I could run on the network in my own shack. It
took a large number of small changes to get the network to reliably pass my
stress test--log 20K QSOs on 4 computers of a mix of operating systems
without having to restart the network. It now works on my network. Your
milage may vary.
What is a WL beta tester?
We expect you to install and run new versions of the software and look for
various issues. (a) tests run on new features or confirmation that bugs have
been fixed and (b) "regression" tests that you run--things you normally do
that demonstrate whether something unexpected is broken. The most common
example of (a) is that I will explicity ask for features to be exercised.
The most common example of (b) is that you download the beta release and use
it in a real contest.
We also expect beta testers to NOT post comments on beta test bugs or
features on writelog@contesting.com until after the new version is released
publicly. I need the beta testing process itself to be limited to a
reasonably sized group (on the order of 10). (You may note that I broke my
own rule by mentioning the features in 10.64 above--Yes I did. I promise I
won't do it again--after I have a set of active beta testers.) At some point
I decide whether to make a given version public. (The beta testers provide
input, but don't decide.)
Being a beta testers is "mutually agreed" between you and me. This means
that either you or I can unilaterally decide you are not a beta tester
anymore.
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