On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Jon A. Cruz wrote:
Bryce Harrington wrote:
Since we have a lot of Win32 users but a precious few Win32 developers, what could we do to increase the quantity of Win32 devs to better match the need? Would user-funded bug bounties help?
Well... given that the code differences are not that much, I'm not sure if we need a bounty.
However, testing is one phase. Once I'm setup to cross-compile I could do a lot more, but I'd still need a person to run under Windows XP to do the actual testing.
I was thinking that we kinda need a QA group. We don't need as many developers as we do good people on Win32 who can run things down in different scenarios and help to get things reproduceable. Seems to me that the main hurdle for the Win32 bugs is in tracking them down in enough detail and getting them reproduceable.
Okay, that's good to know. Testers are probably tons easier to find, too, so this sounds much more feasible. What would the procedure for them to follow be?
However... if bounties could get a few of us basic Windows machines to do testing on... :-D
Hmm, well we may be able to get Linux folk to donate unneeded WinXP, etc. licenses/CD's. dealsdepot.com has cheap refurbished machines that may be sufficient for Windows testing, in the $50-200 range (sans monitor), and I would assume we could get a couple dozen Windows users to donate $10-20 if it will help in the fight against Windows bugs.
Bryce