Leading items and editorials: When is the right time to release
free software?, The StarOffice source is out and Sharing the Dream
of Flight.
“When is the right time to release free software? Red Hat has
taken some grief recently for releasing development versions of the
compiler and C library with Red Hat 7. One reason (of many) that
has been put forward to explain this decision is that Red Hat is
seeking to help stabilize the development of gcc 3.0 by increasing
the development version’s user base. By increasing the number of
testers (also known as “users”), Red Hat 7 will flush out the
remaining bugs and provide motivation for the gcc team to get 3.0
out there….”
“The StarOffice source is out. Right on time, Sun released the
source for StarOffice – now renamed OpenOffice. There is obviously
interest in this release – the download traffic on the first day
was such that Sun’s server evidently crashed from the load. We
would be tempted to comment on how that server is probably running
Solaris, but that would be a cheap shot. In any case, a new
distribution scheme via Akamai has been set up, and downloads are
now fast….”