Re: critical issues

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 10:36 AM, Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> wrote:
>> If we refuse thinking about stable releases by taking GUB as an
>> excuse, the grand next stable release that will benefit users of
>> many operating systems is likely to fall in the class "too little,
>> too late".
>
> I second David.  Given that we develop within a GNU environment, bugs
> specific to Windows and Mac shouldn't prevent stable releases.  I can
> even imagine that well announced release candidates for a new stable
> version attracts developers to help fix issues with problematic
> platforms.

>From a support perspective, not releasing the windows and mac versions
at the same time is problematic.  Many questions and bugreports that
could be answered with "upgrade to the latest version" all of a sudden
start depending on the platform that the user is using. Also, it makes
it more difficult to get users to pay for work, since users won't pay
if you don't release the work to their platform

I fully sympathize with the desire to junk Mac and Windows for being a
pains in the asses to develop for, but they are the platforms where
the majority of the users are. We (Jan and I) made a conscious
decision that having more users is better for lilypond than saving
some developer resources over not distributing windows/mac binaries.

> Given that we develop within a GNU environment, bugs
> specific to Windows and Mac shouldn't prevent stable releases

I don't see how this reasoning works. You do stable releases for
users, not developers.

-- 
Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen