[sldev] 1.23.4 released in a hurry ? NO.

[Kent Quirk (Q Linden)]

On Jun 17, 2009, at 7:48 AM, Latif Khalifa wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 7:19 PM, Brad Kittenbrink (Brad
> Linden)<brad at lindenlab.com> wrote:
>> I'm not sure I understand what your complaint is.  There's nothing
>> blocking 1.22 viewers from logging in.  Our policy for deprecating  
>> older
>> viewers is described here:
>> https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/technology/blog/2009/03/09/supported-viewer-versions
>>
>> Quite frankly if you're looking for "Some kind of clue" that a new
>> viewer is going to be released, then IMHO you should treat our  
>> release
>> of RC0 as that clue.  We've been bad in previous releases by calling
>> things that weren't even close to releasable quality "RC" viewers,  
>> but
>> the 1.23 RC process is what we've been aiming for ever since we  
>> started
>> doing Release Candidates.  We're sorry if you've gotten used to us
>> sucking, but this is one case where I'm glad to disappoint you. ;)
>
> It really takes a brave man to claim 1.23RC4 and now production 1.24.4
> "releasable quality". Is that why comments were closed after a few
> dozen or so on the blog post announcing the new viewer?


I absolutely claim that 1.23 is not only of releasable quality, but  
the best viewer we've ever shipped. It met its design goals on RC1.  
The bugs that were found and fixed in the next 3 RCs were minimal. On  
a global statistics level, the crash rates are lower than they've ever  
been, even when you include crashes caused by specific video cards.

There are some individuals who are upset about some of the design  
decisions, like the redesign of pie menus. That's not a quality issue.  
There are other individuals who are upset about some of the technical  
decisions, such as the imposition of rendering limits where we never  
had them before. That's not a quality issue either. And there are  
people who don't like the new Adult-Only stuff. That's also not a  
quality issue.

The definition of quality is meeting the specification. We executed on  
this viewer better than we've ever done it before, and I'm pretty  
proud of our team for doing it.

By the way, contrary to the implication in the subject line, we  
released 1.23.4 almost exactly according to the schedule I announced  
internally in February. The internal decision to ship was based on  
quality. As every professional software organization does, for every  
open issue we balance the risk of shipping a product with that issue  
against the risk of trying to fix it. When all the risks of shipping  
are lower than the risks of fixing, we ship it. Which is what we did  
with RC4.

	Q