On Fri, Aug 05, 2005 at 10:16:49AM +0100, Douglas Neale wrote:

As a very new person in these lists, may I make a comment from my background of writing software for the printing and publishing industry over a period of nearly 40 years..

In the early days, programmers were expected to debug their own code, and usually didn't till it got on site. The customers were then exposed to the nasty underside of software development ie debugging!

As the software industry grew in size it also developed its own professionals and with them came improved testing.

Even today, although I will document my code, I hate testing it!

I always, always insist that part of every contract includes adequate provision for testing with real customer data, but NOT by me.

You should always test software with a third party. That way you get accuracy, thoroughness and impartiality. My 2p Douglas Neale

Thanks Douglas,

Yes, your experience sounds like good wisdom. I've seen this value as well in other projects; testing is very important, and is best done by someone with "fresh eyes".

While many open source projects do without independent testing, I think Inkscape has surpassed the level where we can expect the developers to do the testing on their own. We need to assemble a team of dedicated individuals to help answer this need.

I think we can not only solve Inkscape's needs in doing so, but also serve as a good example to the OSS community at large.

Thanks, Bryce