Lasso Professional Server 8.6 Beta, And The New Public Bug Tracking Website

17 Jan 2011

We've been hard at work, with our noses to the grindstone, to bring you some exciting new developments.  We're pleased to announce to you that today we are releasing Lasso Professional 8.6b.

This is a 90 day beta release, whose purpose is to ensure that the new installers are working properly, as well as help us all shake the dust off of Lasso 8 (aka 'Old Betsy').  It does not include fixes.  The supported platforms for Lasso 8.6b1 include Mac OS 10.5/6 (ppc/i386) and CentOS 5.5 on both 32 and 64 bit.

The download locations and installation instructions (for Linux and YUM) can be found at the bottom of this email, but please don't skip down there just yet - you'll miss a lot of other useful information.

The final release should arrive within 60 days, and will include fixes on all bugs that we're able to identify and resolve.  Therefore, the final release will be a paid upgrade from Lasso 8.5.  We have yet to determine exactly what the 8.6 upgrade price will be, but we'll make it as fair and accessible as we can, considering the work and resources that have been devoted to it's release.

We're also excited to share with you today our new public bug tracking overview interface.  This interface is tied directly to our internal bug tracking system.  This public interface is not meant to replace our internal system, where we have much more in-depth information, but to allow a public side to that system, though which the Lasso community can interact with us and keep track of what we're working on.

Our goal is to see this interface become a place where developers can help us locate bugs and discuss them in a systematized manner.  To clarify, the interface is not a forum to lodge complaints about bugs (send those to bugs@lassosoft.com).  What it is, is an opportunity to help Lasso succeed and grow stronger, and we look forward to working together with the community toward that common goal.

We'd like to thank everyone for the assistance they have provided directly, as well as through the various lists.  We'd specifically like to thank the following developers for working directly with us on tracking down some hard-to-replicate issues:

• Ke Carlton- Apache 2.2 Connector consuming 100% CPU
• Chris Wik- Zombie process

If you have input or suggestions on a listed bug (or bugs), the bugs site is the place to share that information with LassoSoft engineers and fellow Lasso developers.  We're seeking developers who can step forward and assist us with some of the critical bugs.

Specifically, we're seeking assistance on the following critical bugs:

• - Apache 2.2 Connector consuming 100% CPU
• - Zombie process
• - Lasso consumes memory
• - Lasso does not automatically restart after crash
• - DNS Deafness

If you can help, or if you have a server with a one or more of the above problems and are willing to give us access, the interface is the place to let us know (or email us directly at bugs@lassosoft.com ).  That goes for any bug, actually, but especially for the ones listed above!

Right now, we're all about finding and squashing bug.  It's what LassoSoft eats, sleeps and breaths.  Lasso developers have been extremely patient over the years, and now it's time to finally put these issues to rest so we can all move onward and upward.

The public bug tracking interface can be found here: http://listening.lassosoft.com/Lasso-8-5-Bugs

Based on a simple online search, Lasso 8.5 has 69 identified bugs.  By comparison, PHP has 1893 and Python has 2469.  Doing some quick math, that  equates to Lasso having approximately 2% of the bugs that plague Python*.  Not too shabby, but we want to get that number even lower!

We would appreciate every single developer's assistance with our bug squashing efforts, and our goal is to make it as easy and transparent as possible to provide that assistance.  If you know of an issue which isn't listed on the public bug tracking overview interface, please get in touch with us at bugs@lassosoft.com and we'll try to get it added.

Thanks!

Kerry Adams

(* ok, ok, so those other languages also have many more users who are reporting bugs, so when you take that into account it's totally conceivable that Lasso actually has MORE bugs, not less.  But that doesn't sound nearly as cool, so we're just going to go ahead and gloss over it.)

Download Instructions:

8.6b1 license: EVAL-qHsttyBpmY5zXMA
The license is valid for (almost) 90 days (4/14).

Mac OS X

Mac OS X download is located here: http://www.lassosoft.com/Downloads/

Product: Lasso Server
Platform: Mac
Version: 8.6.0-beta1

CentOS

The lines between "--" pairs are the pieces that you should type/paste into a command line.

AS ROOT:
--
cat > /etc/yum.repos.d/LassoSoft.repo << EOF
[lassosoft]
name=LassoSoft
baseurl=http://centosyum.lassosoft.com/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
EOF
--

Then, if you are on a 32 bit CentOS:
--
yum install Lasso-Professional-Apache2
--

Or, if you are on a 64 bit CentOS:
--
yum install Lasso-Professional-Apache2.x86_64
--

That should be it.  The RPMs get downloaded and installed automatically from there.