Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Duane Malcolm <d.malcolm AT auckland.ac.nz>]

Hi,

In regard to recent posts I thought I might share my dreams of the ideal 
Sourcemage world. Feel free to destroy some of my dreams. I have played 
around with gentoo and sorcerer and this is where I get some ideas from. 
These ideas are not important so read on only  if you are 
interested/curious.

I think a more effective user feedback system would have potential. 
Currently, the movement of a spell from devel to test and test to stable 
is determined by a small number of persons where there decision for the 
movement is based on there experience and activity in the mailing list. 
Imagine a feedback system where everytime someone does a sorcery update, 
a report is generate based on cast failures and successes. These reports 
are collated and each spell is given a stability value, a simple example 
is the percentage of successful casts. The user would set the percentage 
success level thay are willing to have installed.

This mean we have to support a number of versions of each spell. The 
number of versions we support depends on the number of users from the 
feedback reports using those spells. So for example we would support 
mozilla 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4. let's say from the feedback 30 users use 
mozilla 1.2 and 30 have cast successfully, 2000 users use 1.3 off which 
1990 cast sucessfully, and 1000 users installed mozilla 1.4 of which 
only 500 cast successfully. Therefore, mozilla 1.2 has a stability 
factor of  100% and 1 % of our users use it, mozilla 1.3 has a stability 
factor of  99.5% and 66% of our users use it, mozilla has a 50% 
stability factor and 33% of our users use it. So we stop supporting 
mozilla 1.2 because <1% users. I have set the stability factor on my PC 
to 75% so it won't install mozilla 1.4 until it has a stability factor 
of  75% or greater.

Two quick point, users can actively install mozilla 1.4 even if it's SF 
is lower than 50%. This would feedback through the system and increase 
the stabilty factor of mozilla 1.4 if it works. The user can also 
manually lable a spell as usabilty to fail if the spell successfully 
casts but cast be used properly. And maybe include a comment on how it 
failed.

This is kind of close to home, I use the test grimoire and I did a fresh 
install and mozilla 1.4 casts OK but I can't reply emails, can't start 
up mail from the browser (no icon or option under window menu). So now 
I'm stuck I'm thinking of going back to mozilla 1.3. I'm using a windows 
machine to reply this. This feedback can't be recorded in a quantitative 
manner.

Anyway, just some thoughts.


Duane.