Re: Binary distributions (was: Re: Release goals for 3.6)

[fork]

Lukas Reichlin <lukas.reichlin <at> gmail.com> writes:

 > Also, if you do build binaries and distribute them, what level of
> > support are you willing to provide for free?  For example, when bugs
> > are reported, will they be fixed?  I don't think the oct2mat problem
> > was ever fixed with the 3.2.x binary distribution for Windows that is
> > on Source Forge.  That kind of problem makes Octave look bad, and it
> > seems like it would be easy to fix simply by dropping a single package
> > from the binary installer.
> 
> I think that even binaries without support would be better than no binaries at
all. Providing no binaries
> because there might be a problem doesn't make Octave look any better  And such
problems would arise too
> if the user compiles Octave from source on the affected platform.

Isn't there a "no warranty" thing somewhere in the distribution? ;)  There is no
requirement to provide support to anything in free software, unless you feel
like it, right? And no implicit promise that I ever heard of. 

(And don't give out your personal email if you are worried about getting
annoying emails...)
 
> I was thinking of new developers for Octave and/or Forge packages who
implement new features, fix bugs or
> write documentation rather than building binaries. Suddenly someone pops up
and creates a profiler, a
> GUI or a JIT compiler and this is IMHO more likely to happen if we have a
broader base of users.

Or develop/ migrate toolboxes: one of the main attractions of R/SPLUS is that it
is where the fancy statistics dissertations are getting coded and distributed.
(It is actually a sucky syntax compared to ML in my opinion.)  A lot of the
people doing that work aren't interested in becoming core developers per se, but
they make it a much more exciting party, so to speak.