I've sort of looked as a observer and sometimes a deliverer of feedback on this mailing list.I think the biggest problem is that the alpha release schedule and policy discussion is even occurring. We all love the alpha, they draw attention and they help to keep haiku in the low simmer mode of the FOSS community news cycle, and these are definitely beneficial things to have happening. the long term issue though, is that to many users, and supporter, that Haiku is getting stuck in a release hell cycle. We all know that the package manager is the big stumbling block for the beta phase. However, if Alphas must be release, then just grab something from trunk and release it into the wild. If new features may potentially create bugs, problems etc, they shouldn't really be in the trunk anyways, they should be in a experimental branch to begin with. Haiku has reached a point, where if the applications existed, many people would consider running it full time. That in itself is a amazing feat.
The 10,000 foot view right now from many outside observers ,and I do watch the FOSS community commentary, is that many of them feel Haiku is far more mature then the current Alpha label placed upon it. Many do not understand why Haiku still has alpha status, considering that it is frequently more stable then many other FOSS systems of comparable features and quality.
That leads to the postmortem discussion, what happened, was that a long time bug, thats been around for ages finally got uncovered, It is a good thing that this happened. However, some failures will always happen. With something as complex as a operating system, it is understandable that bugs will invariably show up and spoil the day. The big issue isn't the question of what wrong, the big question was more what was right about this particular situation. Lets put this into a customer service perspective.
customer try new product, customer gets frustrated with new product 2 avenues that can be taken#1 tell the customer that it tough shit its a new product etc, make excuses and start the denial process
#1 have a conversation with the customer, identify the problem, update the product and deliver needed functionality, bug fixes, finish quality etc.
a healthy business always performs option #2 without fail.Here is the good news, Haiku developers performed option #2, you identified the problem, you found a fix, you delivered it to the customer and you reassured the customer that in the future you would work as hard as you could to prevent further occurrences.The real postmortem of alpha4 wasn't the failure's , it was the response to the failures. Team Haiku did the job, you exceeded expectations in the FOSS community, and you reassured everyone that your committed to producing a outstanding product.
We salute you for this. your a small team, your all work very hard, we all appreciate you for it. Most importantly, at crunch time when you really needed to step up, you did. Job well done ladies and gentlemen. The biggest thing I have learned in my life is that, no one expects perfection, they expect a good effort. We have all had failures, if we learn from them, we have forward progress and success, if we ignore them, belittle the customer and then insult them, we all have failure.
Now, to my last little note in this email. The Haiku team needs a QA process, its allot of work. How can the supporter help you with this. It goes beyond trac and if the opportunity existed to assist in many would gladly help.
Sincerely Sean CollinsPS don't dwell on the failures, devise systems and procedures to prevent them.
