Dent said:
I liked compiling my own releases and trying out the "lastest" alphas/betas knowing full well that there may be bugs.
Exactly the point i was making about not being able to make a proper release.
There are many reasons we came to the decision to hold back source code until full releases.
Here is my issue with people compiling it themselves all of the time:
r-win and I spend countless of free hours busting our balls to make the release be a big hit when we finally release it. So imagine you worked a combined 500 (example, its actually more) hours to make a great release, busted your ass, and the only pay you get is the satisfaction of that release. Now everyone can have that release before it is ready, and can do what they wish with it. When the release hits it is not a big deal to anyone because they already had it, since they compiled it themselves the whole way, noticing the improvements gradually. This way the only thing the developer gets is the relief of getting the release out, but not the satisfaction that it was a big hit.
Now lets consider the contrary, where the in between revs are NOT available to everyone.
We have our small team of beta testers who can see the gradual changes, and help us find the bugs. We still work the same amount on the next release BUT, when the release comes out it makes a big hit because everyone was anticipating it so much, and the improvements and changes seem much greater to them because they did not see it all coming gradually like in the previous case. In this sense the developer gets the relief of getting the release out finally, AND the satisfaction that everyone makes such a great deal out of how great the release is, since they see all the changes at once and it seems so different.
Let use have our satisfaction. Let our releases be the huge deal that they are, to better match our efforts we developers exert in order to make these applications great. Everyone needs to stop complaining about it. Its kinda like everyone is being very selfish now about them not being able to leech now that its put this way right?