Re: LilyPond 2.17.4 released

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen]

David Kastrup writes:

> Negative connotation.  But reversed (see below) it is not actually that
> bad.
>
> "it is strongly recommended that only experienced users try working with
> this release.  Everyone else is encouraged to use the stable 2.16
> version instead."
>
> Something like that.

Why not simply state the case.  What are the reasons to recommend only
experienced users, why boilerplately encourage 2.16?

Probably:
  * we don't want people inadvertently upgrading
  * we don't want clueless bug reports: we don't want to answer them
    and we don't want to ignore them
  * we don't want users who need a new feature try this for production
    and in the moment of printing find out something basic broken
  * we don't want users to ruin their lilypond setup and asking for
    help how to downgrade

However, what would we want?
  * many downloads and testing by experienced users --> why not?
    more user involvement, extension of the community?
  * clueful bug reports: could be especially nice to have a bug
    reported the very moment/release that it breaks, right? even
    if we don't [promise to] fix it right away.

So, what about something like:

LilyPond 2.17.x, aka the my-hickup-or-yours?-release.

This is a development release.  As such, it has not had [XXX testing or
stabilation/wide user testing ] so we cannot give any guarantees and we
cannot give any user support.

Clueful and accurate bug reports are highly valued, however, this means
that you must be actively tracking development and reading the
bug-lilypond list.  If you are not, you are invited to do so, see
COMMUNITY.

If you depend on a feature listed in CHANGES [listing the newly added
ones would be nice], and you are not discouraged by now, you may want to
give this a try.  Remember: you're on your own!

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden> | GNU LilyPond http://lilypond.org
Freelance IT http://JoyofSource.com | Avatar®  http://AvatarAcademy.nl