[GNC] GnuCash 5.9 on macOS 15.2 Dev Beta

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 11/2/2024 9:26 PM, William Prescott wrote:
>  From Seth's comment below, it appears that the problem is only with MacOS 15.2, the public beta. Has anyone else confirmed that Gnucash 5.9-1 runs okay on MacOS 15.1?
>
> Best wishes,
> Will

This tells me time to remind folks what "alpha" and "beta" mean for 
software versions.

"alpha" is the stage of new version testing where USER testing is 
initially taking place. It is expected that there will be many bugs 
discovered. The users, at this stage should only be folks in close 
contact with the developers. In other words, they are volunteer testers. 
They would be reporting problems they encounter directly to the 
developers with which they are working.

"beta" is the next stage, where the version is made available to a wider 
range of users. It is expected that most things will be working properly 
but that there will still be some bugs here and there. In other words, 
being distributed on a "use if you dare" basis. Maybe the parts YOU use 
are all working OK. Ideally a beta user should be familiar with how to 
report bugs. But the user is under less obligation toward getting things 
fixed. In other words, might simply choose yo abandon the beta version 
and revert to the last stable. A beta user should be willing to pick up 
fixes as they are announced.

The point is, a beta user should not "complain" about something not 
working. It is still use at your own risk.

NOTE: This affects how people should report "bugs". Especially with 
alpha, but also with beta, it is reasonable to assume something going 
wrong is a bug. But users of stable should not immediately assume 
something going wrong is a bug. Before calling it a bug, ASK "I was 
doing so and so and something went wrong. Anybody else seeing this? Is 
so and so working for you?" The reason for this is to not burden the 
developers with researching non-bug problems. If something seems to be 
working for everybody else but not for you more likely not an actual 
bug. Will first need to carefully examine how everybody else is doing so 
and so with how you are. IF it is actually a bug, will depend on any 
differences.

Michael D Novack

PS -- know why we call them "bugs"? << the origin of the tern >>