On Wed, 2009-10-14 at 17:06 -0500, Jerry Amundson wrote:
On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Phil Schaffner Philip.R.Schaffner@nasa.gov wrote:
A message on centos-users has raised a question in my mind about the openness of the QA process. I'm pretty sure that there is no desire to greatly expand the QA team, but on the other hand a few more serious QA testers might be worthwhile. I started to reply to the message below with a link to an announcement of opportunity to join the QA team from the centos-devel list, and possibly to add a bit to the "Contribute" page, but decided it might be better to bounce the idea around here instead.
I see a need to bounce this around some more. The bottom line, whether or not the CentOS core group wants to admit it, is this : more people
- more testing = more love.
There are, of course, details as to the "people", and the "testing" (and for that matter, the "love" :-), but that concerns the Who and the What. So, here, we can start the `How' of QA Accessibility. How do I, for example, become involved in QA to help CentOS become even better?
The "C" in CentOS is meant as "the community", not as "the clique", and that should apply towards every facet of the distribution. That said, however, I also recognize the core group's desire to limit noise, etc. I think the point here is that through *discussion and documentation* we can reach a middle ground which adds benefit to CentOS as a whole, but without further burden to the development core.
Still bouncing...
There are a range of opinions floating around about the openness of developing and testing new releases. Let's limit the current discussion to the topic at hand: QA accessibility. Seems to go something like this - not all the cases below are necessarily mutually exclusive.
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1. Public Beta open to all, with appropriate warnings about the dangers of use on production machines.
Pros: Lots of people testing and finding/reporting bugs and issues. Could complement case #2 or #3.
Cons: High noise level on centos-users and/or centos-devel. Possibility of increased support burden on core team members. Possible negative "publicity" and bad vibes from users with broken installs.
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2. More open process based on the current QA model. Document and publicize the process for joining the QA team on the Wiki, and/or www.centos.org. Point seemingly qualified people to the process on MLs and fora. Allow more vetted members to join QA. I'd suggest going as far as making the QA list world-readable.
Pros: More people testing and finding/reporting bugs and issues. Better coverage of hardware platforms and wider/deeper software testing.
Cons: More traffic on QA list. Not necessarily a bad thing, but this is what I am advocating, so I may be prejudiced.
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3. Current QA process - don't mess with it.
Pros: Working pretty well.
Cons: Coverage of the range of hardware platforms and software testing has a lot of room for improvement. People disgruntled about lack of openness about the process.
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What have I missed, and who falls where on the spectrum?
Phil