Commercial software vendors never dare to release their products unless exhaustive tests have been done — no jeopardy on their profit or profile. This means both safety and longer release circle.

OSS (open source software) is exactly the opposite. The developing process for OSS itself relies on frequent release — many users are testers. It is highly interactive: users and developers work closely all the time to invent new features and fight bugs to perfect their product. Together we create a better world: that’s the spirit in the OS community. Of course, it feels great: instead of arrogant consultants vs. impatient customers, we only have friendly conversations, warm encourages and sincerely critics.

Here I have a suggestion for all OSS users — especially newcomers. Don’t wait for release announcement on the official webpage. Look into the repository directly, or at least check out the nightly builds. Try them, test them and report problems you run into. One email can benefit the entire community. Here I won’t give examples how I found a problem and how I tell the developers. The following are some OSS projects that I usually track the development. They are all very active but may not have announcement to reflect that. So I briefly introduce them here.

a. Code::Blocks

There are new nightly builds every one or two weeks. I am sure there is at least one feature you would need: double-click to maximum the coding window. This feature was added long time ago, actually…

b. MyPaint

If you are still using version 0.9.1, then please see the following screenshot of the version I build from the source code 3 days ago.

Did you notice the mode dropdown menu? I failed to find out how to take a screenshot with that menu expanded, but the current available options are: Multiply, Burn, Dodge and Screen (and of course, the Normal mode). So get it, what’re you waiting for anyway?

c. Blender

It is just intolerable if you are a Blender user, and you’ve never heard of graphicall.org — the place where all the newest builds are published (not just Blender, although it’s the main one). Under my Linux I tried the most recent Cycles built yesterday — this render engine had noticeable improvement in its speed. There are more builds for Windows and MAC OS than Linux, so don’t hesitate and click the link!