Archive for February 7th, 2007

Posted on February 7, 2007 - by jono

Jokosher: Call For Testers

On Friday last week, Jokosher hit its feature freeze. This means that no new features will enter Jokosher and the next month will be spent purely on bug-fixing. As some of you will know, there has actually been little major new functionality in Jokosher since 0.2 – this release is about bug-fixing and getting Jokosher streamlined, sanding off the edges and getting it stable.

Now, we need your help. We really, really do. We want Jokosher 0.9 (the next release, scheduled for a March release) to be rock-solid. We have a month scheduled for bug fixing, but we need to know your bugs. We need you folks to test it and report problems to us so we can fix them. Without lots of testing, Jokosher will simply not be stable enough. If we all work together, we will have a rock-solid Jokosher on our hands.

So how do you do this? Well, I have written a simple little guide. Testing is a pretty simple process and requires no programming knowledge – it just means you test Jokosher and tell us when it screws up. So, go read the guide and help us test it and make it kick some arse.

We also have our Jokosher Forums as a place to discuss the application and your experiences testing it. Specifically, the Help Forum is useful for testing related discussion.

I am serious here – we really, really need your help testing Jokosher. It is critical that we get as many bug reports as possible about things that don’t work quite right so we can nail them for the next version, which will be making an appearance in most distros when it is released. Now is the time, test it, report it, discuss it!

Posted on February 7, 2007 - by jono

Nice one Steve

Credit where credit is due to Steve Jobs for his recent Open Letter. This is exactly the kind of discussion people in his position should be having to promote an open marketplace and freedom. His letter quite clearly states that “if the Big 4 music companies provide DRM-free songs, this will be a good thing” – I am impressed that he is taking this stance, particularly with their dominant market position and pre-existing relationships with the Big 4.

It also makes me chuckle. There seems to be a bit of this going on:

Five Years Ago…

Steve: Hi Big 4, we are creating this online music store and trendy little device to play the music on. We are a cool company, and admired by a generation of people with disposable income, would you like to be a part of it?

Big 4: Hmmm, sounds a bit dangerous…

6 months later…

Big 4: OK, we will be part of it, but we need you to make something called a DRM that will protect our precious music.

Steve: Of course, protecting music is essential…utterly essential. You wish is my iCommand.

5 years and 2 billion songs later…

Steve: Haha suckers! You should be using DRM free systems and we own the music player market!

Interesting about-turn. Kudos Steve. Want to come and speak at LUGRadio Live 2007? We will you a pint.