You seem to be very concerned about alphas hurting the net. But I think the guys in BearShare labs know about the risk. That is why the alpha has the expiration date, and the alpha is announced only in BearShare labs forum. That is the only place where can be found the link to the alphas (only one that I know). So, there is not that big userbase with the alphas.

And I'm also pretty sure that they have tested the alpha in pirvately very long before releasing it public. The first public alpha version number was 35, so there was least that many private releases before the public version. That means months of testing and developing.

There are also numerious of different "Final release" clients which are much more harmful to the network, mostly because the higher number of users. That would be eliminated if the users upgrade their client to the recent version, or move to other client which is under active development.


That is they have chosen. The way BearShare staff have chosen is different, and they have done a lot to minize the risks that they may cause.

Wait the numer 35 says nothing, it means only they discovered some bugs and changed some features not how long they tested it. I read Vinnies comment as he relaesed this alpha, he said somethinglike is "very" unstable...

A tested version is not very unstable, it might have bugs but not should be stable enough to release it.

About this 10 days expiration, you can hurt the net ten days... sure its not as much as other do with a final release but its could hurt the net too... and I think this is what the people should avoid.

There are several ways to hurt the net and I think its funny that a developer who is crying that other hurt the net is doing the same...

But this is a point of view, and remember I didn´say that the alpha hurt I said it could hurt as you proved in your post on bearshare.net...

Morgwen

That is right. That warning note was on the alpha announcement page. I found the first alphas hard to use (mostly becasue all of the missing features) so that I didn't even try to use it as my primary client.

Well, I guess it was stable enough because it got released.. And the users have got warned about the bugs.

I agree.

Well, least he didn't do it intentionally. Everyone makes mistakes.



And by the way, it is no more an alpha, it is beta now. And a damn good one, I can't wait the final release!