From: Paul Richards <p.richards@elsevier.co.uk>
Message-Id: <199605071534.QAA11999@cadair.elsevier.co.uk>
Subject: Re: require-client functionality
To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com
Date: Tue, 7 May 1996 16:34:39 +0100 (BST)
In-Reply-To: <199605061705.NAA10670@volterra.ai.mit.edu> from "Robert S. Thau"
 at May 6, 96 01:05:33 pm
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In reply to Robert S. Thau who said
> 
> [ From q terminal room with French National keyboards; pardon any 
>   "original" spelling... ]
> 
> Ummm... as the guy who brought up Henry Spencer's name originally,
> I most certainly *don't* recall agreeing to incorporation of large new
> pieces of code into the code base at this point in the release cycle.
> Has anyone got a strong argu,ent about why it is necessary to introduce
> this *now*, as opposed to it being just a good idea in general?  If not;
> I would probably be inclined towards a veto.

Rob (Hartill) and some others here have a wacky idea about release
engineering.

This needs to get sorted out pretty sharpish. The last release was an
embarrasment since there were numerous serious bugs in it that had to be
promptly fixed. We promised ourselves that wouldn't happen again but it
seems no lessons have been learnt :-(

If we're in beta test then lets do testing and stop developing.

Apache is getting respectable, people are seeing it's number 1 and
third party companies are writing code for it. We now have people from
Cygnus and elsewhere on this list and we need to sharpen up our
attitude. This is now a world renowned project, we need to stop being a
bunch of hackers having fun with no regard for the product and start
behaving like a product development team.  That doesn't mean it won't
still be fun but there need to be periods of restraint around
releases.

We're supposed to be shaping up a release, that means we test, test,
test on as many platforms under as many different situations as we can
to shake out those bugs that casual usage doesn't show up. The tree
shouldn't be touched other than to fix showstopper bugs.

I'm not going to veto, it's up to the more active contributors to decide
what lines this project should be run along but bear this in mind, with the
eyes of the web community now on this project and some serious companies
keeping a close watch, do you really think adding a few new toys at this
stage is more important than ensuring the next version is a top quality
product?

-- 
  Paul Richards. Originative Solutions Ltd.  (Netcraft Ltd. contractor)
  Elsevier Science TIS online journal project.
  Email: p.richards@elsevier.co.uk
  Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 (0)1865 843155