[Fwd: Wine-Wiki.org]

[tony_lambregts at telusplanet.net]

Francois Gouget wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 tony_lambregts at telusplanet.net wrote:
> [...]
> 
>> How is that really different than this.
>>
>> http://appdb.winehq.org/help/?topic=maintainer_ratings
>>
>> The Maintainer rating system is meant for "supported" applications.
> 
> 
> That's the thing. There is no such thing as a 'supported application' in 
> Wine, at least the way I understand 'supported':
>  * there is no garantee a 'supported' application will continue to work 
> in the next version of Wine. That's because Alexandre does not try each 
> 'supported' application to make sure it still works before making a 
> release.
> 
>  * there's no Wine hacker to fix a 'supported' application if it breaks. 
> Having an application maintainer for each 'supported' application is 
> important and a first step towards making sure it will continue to work. 
> But it's not sufficient. If it breaks it will need a Wine developer to 
> look into it and debug it and I don't see any one proposing to do it or 
> able to garantee this.
> 
>  * There's no garantee that a Gold application will not regress to 
> Silver, Bronze or even lower.
> 
>  * And finally I don't see any Wine hacker proposing any specific 
> 'support' for the 'supported' applications.
> 
> So these 'supported' applications are no different from any other 
> application and the medals mean nothing more than the old rating system.
> They just have 4 levels instead of 6.
> 

As far as things go until we go to a "Stable release" system then we will always 
have this problem. When we do go to a Stable release cycle I would expect that 
part of the criteria for the next stable release would be that all "Gold" 
applications were still "Gold". That would be at least one big incentive for 
someone to become a maintainer. It is critical that the maintainers find 
regressions in a timely manner in order to do this and without maintainers we 
can never expect to get to wine 1.0.

In the mean time applications are supported in the sense that someone is willing 
to make sure that regressions are at least noted, and that the entry is 
maintained (write a HOWTO, answer comments, provide a screenshot and in the 
future ruport bugs).

The level of support that anyone can expect from any maintainer is that they 
(the maintainer) will try to help the person get the program to run.

> 
>> The terms gold and silver are what were already there and are similar 
>> to what CodeWeavers uses.
> 
> 
> The terms are similar but the AppDB medals provide none of the garantees 
> that the CodeWeavers' medals provide.
> 

To quote CodeWeavers website.

"CrossOver Office only officially supports about a dozen applications. However, 
the truth is that CrossOver runs many Windows applications quite well,"

http://www.codeweavers.com/site/compatibility/

CodeWeavers does not make any guarantee that just because one version of a 
program is supported the next will be (ie Microsoft Word). So if we had a stable 
release cycle and CodeWeavers does not change their official support policy. 
They approach the same meaning.


One other thing I sould say is that: There _is_ (or at least should be) a 
difference in expectation  between "Paid for Support" and "Free Support"

> 
>> If you would like to refine those definitions feel free to submit a 
>> patch.
> 
> 
> That's the thing with numbers (stars) and medals: it's not clear what 
> they mean. It might be clearer to just state:
>   Not tested
>   Does not install
>   Installs
>   Starts up
>   Usable
>   Perfect

Any rating system sucks by definition in my book. You forgot.

Does not install but if copied over from a real windows system runs perfectly..
Does not install but if copied over from a real windows system is usable.
I can apply a patch (hack) that Alexandre won't apply and then it will start up.
I can apply a patch (hack) that Alexandre won't apply and then it is usable.
I can apply a patch (hack) that Alexandre won't apply and then is perfect.
I can use sidenet and it works fine.

There are more ....

There is no way around the fact that if a program is not "Gold" or "Perfect" you 
need a at least a HOWTO.

> 
> As for the maintainer vs. user rating, both should use the same system 
> since they are both doing the same thing. It's just that the maintainer 
> rating should be given a more prominent place.
> 

If it was up to me I would eliminate the the user rating. (But thats me.)

> 
> [...]
> 
>> These discussions are important feedback to improving the AppDB, so 
>> thank you for your thoughts.
> 
> 
> Yes, I am very thankful for all the work people have been putting in the 
> Application Database lately. I think the Application Database is an 
> important piece of WineHQ and it's fantastic to see it get some love and 
> attention at last.
> 
> 

We try..

--

Tony Lambregts