Comments on: Build 57 – AIM/ICQ Fixes

By: JaneRadriges

JaneRadriges — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:23:17 +0000

I really like your post. Does it copyright protected?

By: Carbonize

Carbonize — Sun, 31 May 2009 13:03:14 +0000

@Chris – If you’re not happy try Trillian. They didn’t update for over 3 years.

By: Chris Jones

Chris Jones — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:03:37 +0000

“There’s no sense in releasing a patch for an old version when it’s about to be outdated in less than 24 hours.” – @Mike

As an alpha user, why would I care if I have an old version if I can’t even use the thing?

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:28:28 +0000

This AIM patch was not a major release, and it was tested before it was released by a small group of users who reported having the problem with their AIM accounts. Knowing those two things, we decided to release the fix to all beta users because if we didn’t there would be a whole lot of people unable to log in to AIM.

We started getting reports of this problem as we were wrapping up an alpha release (we were literally about to flip you guys over to the new version) so we dropped that and started working on this AIM problem to minimize the number of affected people.

There’s no sense in releasing a patch for an old version when it’s about to be outdated in less than 24 hours. It’s just a waste of time for us; it has nothing to do with a group of users getting multiple updates in a short time span.

If you’re an alpha user and you need AIM that badly, feel free to switch back to the beta temporarily. Other than the few minutes it takes to update, you won’t lose anything. When the alpha is released you can always switch back.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:23:37 +0000

chris you still don’t seem to understand how the alpha builds work. i don’t know the inner workings of the development team here, but i’m guessing it’s a lot more complicated to add the fix to two different sets of code.

the alpha builds contain features and fixes that the non-alpha build does not. so patching both isn’t going to be so simple.

it’s more important to apply the patch to the non-alpha builds because those users expect and require stability. alpha users should know what they’re getting into when they become alpha users.

perhaps you’re just not cut out to be an alpha tester. if you rely that heavily on your messenger service then you should stick to the non-alpha releases.

when they release the patch for the alpha users it sounds to me like it’s going to be another major patch with many fixes and possibly features, this is why they didn’t release it last night. if there was a show stopper they wouldn’t be back to fix it till morning.

it doesn’t take a software developer to understand their reasoning.

also, why go back to pidgin? why not just remove the alpha build file and revert to the stable release? that would have been quicker no doubt.

By: Digsby

Digsby — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:58:28 +0000

@SacredCultivator: Fixed

By: SacredCultivator

SacredCultivator — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:31:08 +0000

Just a note… This is a Public Release right? Yet the Blog Entry is filed under “Alpha” =X

By: Chris Jones

Chris Jones — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:06:07 +0000

@Carbonize/@Brandon – Trust me, I get the fact that being an alpha user means that my version will most likely be unstable.

But if there is a fix available – the very fact that I’m an alpha user should mean that I get that fix before anyone else. Not the other way around. I understand being careful about releasing updates to live/production/non-alpha users – their copy needs to be stable.

Saying that I should stop bitching about my version being unstable because it is an alpha release is fine. But apply that same logic to the fact that if they would have released the update to ALL users – and there was a “showstopping” bug – then I would have to accept it also BECAUSE I’M AN ALPHA TESTER.

I’ve already switched back to Pidgin. I am a software developer myself and this kind of release behavior is unacceptable.

By: Amie

Amie — Fri, 29 May 2009 11:33:14 +0000

Have to say I’m with Chris Jones on this one. It seems…misguided…to throw a fix to the regular users but not the alpha users. So what if we end up getting 2 updates/patches in a single day? It’s not like it would be the first time the alpha is updated and then updated several more times in order to ‘fix’ the previous updates.

I’d been generally very happy with your product since switching over from Trillian Pro…but this did not make me happy. I’m not yet to a point where I’ll start looking for other software, but I also will bear this episode in mind if it proves to be a trend rather then a one-shot occurrence.

By: Carbonize

Carbonize — Fri, 29 May 2009 11:04:32 +0000

@Chris Jones – The magic word is ALPHA. A product that is classed as Alpha may be bug riddled and is used at the testers own risk. An Alpha release is much more likely to result in bug reports than a stable release and this is why alphas are only released early in the day so that they can hopefully fix any major bugs BEFORE the end of the day.

It’s called common sense.