Re: PSPP should remove the scary, misleading message about "UNRELEASED TEST SOFTWARE! NOT FOR PRODUCTION USE!"

[Alan Mead]

On 2/24/2016 9:43 AM, John Darrington wrote:

Unfortunately I disagree :(

Yes it is loud.  It is scary.  It was intended to be those things.

John,

I don't want to be augmentative but I cannot ever agree (for several reasons, outlined below) that "scary" is good.  And I know you're a "FLOSS guy" so I'm surprised that we disagree about those points; so I've tried to clarify.

I do not follow your reasoning why it could possibly be construed as a GPL
violation (but if we choose to exercise Option 7b of the licence, then
removing this text would be a violation).

I made the point that the message is a kludge added to fix a problem already addressed by the GPL. So there is sense in which our kludge supersedes or overshadows the GPL and we are ignoring the GPL guidance.  I don't know that we are in "violation" but we should adhere more closely to the GNU guidance.

And we are "scaring" users; especially Windows users who don't know "git" from "production."  Isn't scaring users and explicitly telling them not to use a snapshot ("for production") directly contradictory with FLOSS practices like "release early and release often" or the concept that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow?" What other FLOSS software includes such an intentionally scary message?

You related a story about a bad review. I think those concerns are perhaps natural but fairly contrary to FLOSS. But assuming The Message precludes another bad review, is that worth it to "scare" users to preclude that bad review?  Does the message actually preclude (or even reduce the chances of) another bad review?

Is the message even sensible?  Aren't there likely to be bugs and limitations in official releases?  And so isn't the "not for production use" part of the message approximately as true for the release as for newer snapshots?  Are Windows users really better off using 0.8.5, rather than the most recent snapshot that Harry has provided? Obviously not, right? So why would we tell them not to use the best, most recent version from Harry rather than 0.8.5?

-Alan

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Alan D. Mead, Ph.D.
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