Re: [Gnash] Re: Time for a new gnash release?

[Rob Savoye]

Patrice Dumas wrote:

> Once again, I don't think that wider use is a interesting goal for gnash
> by now. Hopefully it will become at some point, but currently, and in
> my opinion, completing some features and fixing some bugs is more
> important. Doing a release costs time, 2 branches have to be maintained
> separately and  a freeze has to happen.

  The last release was in Nov, only a few months ago. That release was
much more functional and stable than the previous release, so it was a
good one. Right now about 80% of the bug reports are "doesn't work with
youtube", so it seems silly to do the next release till streaming video
is working. This is the current focus of development, when it works,
we'll do another release. That has us on a rough 6 month release cycle,
which many other projects also follow. To do a release before it's ready
just means being buried in bug reports. Gnash CVS has been quite
unstable for a while now while we do much critical work. This work is
more important, and once CVS stabilizes, we'll be doing another release.

 I've been working on free software projects for a very long time, and a
release doesn't effect the recruiting of more developers. In fact, a
release doesn't really seem to effect anything much at all. Also
preparing a release is a huge amount of additional work, and I'd rather
us focus on the video and performance improvements for now. The next
release is going to be a really good one after the current Gnash
development projects are completed. (video, Flash debugger, many bug fixes)

  I run many GNU projects out of their CVS tree or their CVS snapshots
to get continuing improvement of those projects, so I guess I don't see
the problem. Gnash seems to be like WINE, everybody forgets that
developing complex software takes time, and want to use it fully
functional long before it's truly ready. If we had more developers, we'd
get things done faster, so if you want to increase the speed of Gnash
development, send me your C++ coder friends! (that haven't signed the
damn EULA)

        - rob -