Release schedule plans

[Shane H. W. Travis]

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005, Gervase Markham wrote:

> Word went from 6 to 95. Mozilla went from M18 to 0.6. Patch Maker went
> from 0.75 to 2.0.

Right... and notice how all of those are major jumps, not just 'gaps'?

We have a long-established pattern of releasing 2.even-numbered stable
branches, and 2.odd-numbered development branches *in order*. This is a good
thing. Our customers know what to expect, and they know that 2.16 follows
2.14, which followed 2.12.  I'll have no problem in completely violating
that, however, when we go from 2.xx to 3.00, even if we don't make it to
2.98 first (*please* don't let us make it to 2.98 first...) because that
represents a significant shift, and SHOULD reset the numbering.

If we amalgamate 2.18 and 2.20 into one release, then the 'significant
thing' about that is that we haven't been able to meet our own self-imposed
release dates; that we've been too slow in some areas and too fast in
others, so we've ended up overlapping ourselves.  (Not a criticism, simply
an analysis.) Learn from the mistakes and do better next time... but I don't
personallt see any need to *advertise* the mistakes both now and forever by
creating a hiccup in the release numbering.

(*IF* we amalgamate 2.18 and 2.20, of course.)

Shane H.W. Travis       | The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing
travis at sedsystems.ca    |  because you can only do a little.
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan |   Do what you can.  -- Sydney Smith