Shoutbox

lol... well, just in case someone would have a doubt, please insult me, all of you, and let's keep track of the thread next time someone says everybody on this forum loves me. Sometimes people can get over excited about things/people, I appreciate the good and bad comments I get about Messenger Plus!, as long as they are based on something. If you have a doubt, just search for negative posts on this forum, you'll find plenty as I don't delete them. May I remind you that Plus! now has more than 10M users, out of those you can't blame 100 to jump of joy everytime I release a new version (and it always motivates me anyway ).

Now, as far as leaking the beta is concerned, it's something often only developers can understand. First of all, this is my software, I think I have the right to choose how it's distributed. It's not a matter of who wants to use the software here, it's first a matter of how the author wants his work to be used. Beta versions must not become public because they are buggy, not meant for general public, slow, full of problems, will crash Messenger and will make Microsoft contact me about fixing it.

Distributing beta software has become a fashion and is used by a lot of companies nowadays to justify bugs in their product. Example: Microsoft AntiSpyware. It's been in beta stage for I don't even remember how much time and everytime a big problem is detected, like for NAV recently, they conviniently reply that the software is beta and that people aren't supposed to install a beta product if they can't assume the consequences. Well, what they ommit to say is that they are promoting their beta software on the front page of microsoft.com.

I for one am not about to use the same strategy. I will NOT take you for idiots by releasing a beta product and wash my hands of whatever problem you may get with it. The fact of the matter is that I don't mind if someone more "techy" gets one of my internal betas and uses it. At this point, this person know what he/she is doing. What I don't want however is your friend's friend who is a basic computer user to get the beta because he won't understand what's behind it, he probably won't have any idea what a "beta" is and will consider this version like any other.

I hope I'm making sense for all of you.