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01
Oct

ClearOS 5.1 Beta (Cont.)

Posted by on in ClearFoundation

Have you ever found yourself waking up (without a crazy alarm clock) with a pit in your stomach, because you didn't do what you committed to do the prior day?  That's how I felt this morning.  The open source world is not the same as the world I have lived in for the past 16 years and I'm learning lessons fast!


I set a hard date of Sept. 30, 2009 for the release of ClearOS 5.1 Beta.  Unfortunately setting that date encroached upon the process Peter Baldwin and many others in the community have been using to release code for the last 10 years. The process has been, "DING, DING, DING, the code is done and on the table, come and get it!" not, "Dinner will be ready at 7:35pm."


Historically, I have been accustomed to walking down to a dev team, asking them to create requirements around a feature, and the next thing I know it has been spec'ed, and a delivery date has been set. Then I move on to the next topic, taking a mental note that we'll soon be getting a peek at a new feature - the anticipation is like opening a gift.

---- PAUSE ----
The sun just came up, off to take a photo of the first snow be back in 10 minutes.

All of this said, First: Peter, I will commit to not call you late at night during development and ask for your blessing on a press release with a solid date in it.  Second: I will learn more about open source release cycles and gain a better understanding of how code gets developed in the open source world.

 --- OBSERVATION --- This is a great real world experience that furthers some of the comments received from both Linus Torvalds and Mark Shuttleworth at LinuxCon last week (great learning experience).

I am glad to see Peter Baldwin is dedicated to great software, not just dates.  Thank you for your patience everyone! 

Sincerely - Michael Proper

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