Friday, August 27, 2004

Gaim, Breaking Promises??

Gaim, the best IM client that implement the most protocol, has released another version, regarding some bugs when you change an options in the preferences dialog and some function (i do not know for sure, since i don't read them very well, i just skimmed it). This release is an unusuall release, since Gaim promised that the release cycle was 3 weeks for one release, and they always sticked with x.yy naming conventions (x denotes major version and y denotes minor version), but today they released another version, which called 0.82.1 and it was one day release cycle.

This events just like the kernel updates from Linus Torvalds which was releasing another kernel updates 2.6.8.1 after he found some bugs on kernel version 2.6.8 . This kernel was the first kernel version that used four digits numbering. Before that release, Linux Kernel always sticked with x.y.z naming (x denotes major version, y denotes minor version, and z denotes release version).

Can we call this breaking promises? I don't think so, becase these bugs is important and will affect many users when changing their preferences (mostly for new users, since users that has already installed gaim usually never changes their settings). If this bugs is fixed in another three weeks, imagine how many new users will be disappointed with Gaim and switching to another applications? Well.. you can say "this is an OpenSource world, so it's natural to change to another applications". Yes... that's true, but Gaim has already gain some reputation as an application which compatible with most IM protocols that are available right now, and they are considered as the most active project in the Sourceforge, a huge OpenSource repository.

Hopefully, Gaim developers will carefully releasing their application, so this events will not happen again. Many users will gladly hear this wish, since Gaim is getting bigger and bigger, so it is efficient to download all the code just for a minor updates.

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