[PD] ... and the battle with IT begins

[Roman Haefeli]

Hi Mark

On Thu, 2012-09-13 at 13:14 -0400, m.e.grimm wrote:
> my rant is as follows
> 
> when making a request to have pd-extended 0.43.1 installed on the
> teaching station i get:
> 
> "Mark:
> 
> For obvious reasons, we won't install a beta release of software in a
> production environment.
> 
> The current latest production release will be installed."

This kind of know-it-all behaviour baffles me. Unfortunately, it sounds
like it's not even worth trying to explain yourself when getting such
answers and also like they're hiding their ignorance behind some pseudo
best practices ("beta" on "production".... uuuuh _sounds_ dangerous!!!)

> which im fine with 042.5 but this is just more annoying than anything else.

Definitely.

> am I alone or do others on this list in Universities battle with IT on
> a daily basis? i am suspecting im not alone.....

I also would assume that you're not alone. I happen to have a job in the
IT of a local university and people don't seem to hate us, luckily. But
then, computers in artist labs are not treated equally with computers
from administration that potentially contain sensitive data. Also lab
computers are separated from administration computers in terms of
network topology. This gives a certain degree of freedom for what can be
installed on a lab computer. 
You might argue that your IT is not doing their job correctly when they
consider every machine to be a super-critical high-security
super-sensitive high-importance "production machine". 

> is it the word "BETA" that is so bothersome? what is a "production
> environment"? am i not producing something?

I wonder where they saw the word beta. I just installed Pd-extended from
http://blinky.at.or.at:8888/auto-build/latest/ and whether the  build
nor "help" -> "About Pd" contains the word 'beta'. Probably you tell
them you found a "proper" release.

Roman