Hi all,
We have recently been informed about the proliferation of a series of comments on various social networks and forums about the latest versions of PixInsight that we have published, and especially about the just-released 1.8.8-3 version.
The comments in question come to say that we do not properly test the new versions that we publish, and that we release them with the intention that our users test our software so that they do the job of detecting bugs and issues instead of us.
Not only are all of these comments completely wrong, but they denote an absolute lack of understanding about what PixInsight is and what this project has been representing for more than 15 years. PixInsight is professional software development. This is neither a hobby nor a game for us; it is our very hard daily work, where we invest a very significant part of our existence. If someone thinks that we really do that, we invite him or her to use other products in the market instead of PixInsight, since they will surely seem much better and much better developed.
Besides that, these comments bother me a lot, personally, because for more than a year we have intensified our work even more, striving very hard and giving our best to make PixInsight a stable and powerful platform with an extraordinary potential of future development on four operating systems. I am very proud of the work done recently, not just by me, but also by a bunch of great developers and fine persons, who are contributing their fantastic work for free, so this kind of comment is particularly painful. We test every new version we release in the most comprehensive and intense way possible with our available resources on all supported platforms. If we make mistakes or some problems go unnoticed, we apologize for that and you can be sure that it is not because we have not tried to do our best to solve or detect them.
Other comments imply that we should release new versions less frequently, in order to test them more, instead of causing problems to our users.
These comments denote lack of understanding of what modern software development actually is, particularly for a dynamic project like PixInsight, which is evolving quickly and constantly, and which provides powerful open-source development frameworks to incorporate numerous contributions of collaborators and third-party developers. The people who contribute their scripts and modules are undoubtedly our best asset, and deserve all our effort to provide them with the best tools we can offer. Once more, this is professional software development, so we know very well when a new version is necessary. We do not release a new version because we want to try out new things, but because we are completely sure that the new version will make PixInsight more useful, more stable and efficient, and more enjoyable to all of our users. We are not perfect so we make mistakes, and our mistakes usually cause problems, but those who know us know that we always try to do our best to solve them as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Thank you for your attention.
