> Surely it's more likely to raise (not beg) the question of whether the
> wider community, beyond the tiny developer community, is pulling its
> weight in performing testing.  This is a free software project, after
> all, and that means that the quality control you get is approximately
> as good as that which you put in.  It would appear that significant
> issues are showing up in the software, and that suggests to me that
> maybe people aren't testing very thoroughly, or haven't worked out a
> good exercise of all the features, especially under load, in order to
> demonstrate that it really works as intended.

I made the mistake of misusing the term "begs the question". In my
defense, this particular misuse of the term is in common use.

I wish I could contribute more, and I certainly don't want to appear
ungrateful to the Slony developers, but owing to the complexity of
Slony, I don't know where to begin. Frankly, I can only afford to
spend a small amount of time on testing Slony or making *any* sort of
contribution to free software projects. To me, Slony is mostly a black
box. Coming up with a comprehensive test suite would, I'd speculate,
require being as knowledgeable about Slony as the developers
themselves. Unfortunately, attaining that level of understanding isn't
an option for most users, myself included.

Regards,
Peter Geoghegan