You can't be serious.
3.8b15 is exactly what it says it is - BETA software. It appears to me
there is a terrible lack of understanding about exactly what BETA means.
>From comments here (and many other places, I'm not trying to single out
anyone in particular), it looks like many, many of you expect any software
released from Lucent to be "production quality." Even if they state,
OPENLY AND LOUDLY, that it is not. Those who expect such, then, are fools.
If you need stable, reliable software in a production environment, the
answer is really quite simple: DON'T EVER USE BETA SOFTWARE.
Let's look at the software development process: a programmer (or team -
programmer is a generic term here) is handed a project. The programmer
then writes basic code that he thinks will do the job. He hands it to a
group of people internally, and they try it out - that's alpha software.
Once the more obvious bugs are worked out, and it appears to work pretty
well internally, the software is then sent to a select group of people to
try in different environments. This is beta software. More bugs are
found, squashed. Then the software might be released to the general
public, for use in many varied environments. This is an open beta. It is
TEST software, nobody is claiming it is bug-free, nobody claims that it
will work. You use it at your own risk, and if you do so in your
production environment, and it doesn't work, then you go back to the
version that did, and you tell the development folks what didn't work.
The constant bitching about beta software that doesn't work perfectly is
hilarious - beta software never has been perfect, and beta software never
will be (though 3.8b13 is pretty darn good).
Let me be more succinct: if you don't have a spare Portmaster to play
around with, don't load beta code. If you load it into a production
environment, and it fails, you have only yourself to blame. Don't bitch to
Lucent, don't bitch to the list... no amount of bitching is ever going to
make beta software work perfectly in every environment.
Dave Stewart
System Manager
Homenet Communications, Inc.
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