LinuxInsider Talkback

Re: Firefox 3 Beta: Good Enough Now and Getting Better
Posted by: Dwight Silverman 2008-02-21 05:49:30

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Don't look now, but the third volley in the second browser war is about to be fired, and it's packing an impressive payload. Mozilla, the folks developing the Firefox Web browser, last week released a new test version. It's the third beta of Firefox 3.0, and it's solid enough that it could become your main browser right now, even before it's formally finished. Regular readers know I usually warn mainstream users away from beta software, but Firefox 3.0 beta 3 is different. Not only does it seem to be very stable, but it fixes several problems that bothered Firefox 2.0 users.

Being sick of featuritis
Posted by: bogdanbiv 2008-02-23 02:45:34 In reply to: Dwight Silverman

Being sick of featuritis. The guy recommends using beta software in a production environment because "it's got so many features". This is called Featuritis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_featurism ) and comes from being overly enthusiastic over some of the qualities of the free software products and ignoring others.
I dislike this because it makes end users have high expectations of this new software only to be disappointed by the number of bugs in it.
All software has bugs, I bet Firefox 3 has them too. Bugs will be found even after it is released. But that is ok since most bugs will be repaired.
Please, use Firefox 3 when the team developing it says it is ready. Oh if you do what to test it out please do so. But, please, do not ever say software X is production ready when the team developing it says it is not.
Using Firefox 3 Beta N in production environments and recommending to do so is therefore irresponsible. Actions like these hurt the image of the free software community/&products.
Hope I wasn't to harsh in expressing my point of view.