Release timing

[Christopher Hicks]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, Shane H. W. Travis wrote:
> 1st - May/Nov - Everythig has past, nothing is imminent. Good time for a
> 	big push for closure.

I must say this really makes a lot of sense.  Shane may have gone to a 
more thorough effort to prove the case than necessary, but in my opinion 
its a point well made.

While I sympathise with Vlad and Gerv for their holiday push I suspect 
that most of humanity gets more work done during work months and less work 
done during holiday months.  But these objections are not merely 
anecdotal, but also help underscore Shane's point.  I'm sure some 
significant percentage of folks will take advantage of the holidays to do 
development of various types that will move bugzilla along, but it seems 
to be that would be the time for blazing new trails instead of cleaning up 
old ones.  The central question is: do you think most people will be more 
available and more easy to reach over the holidays or over the 
nonholidays?  I hope its clear to everybody that doing doing the "big 
push" towards a release is a time when having all hands on deck and the 
least chance of barriers to communication is going to be when people are 
not on the Internet through their relatives decrepit dialup connection.**

I applaud Dave's effort to move the schedule to one that works the same 
year after year.  Whether he put Shane's depth of thought into deciding 
the dates, the dates seem well chosen to me.  This will help establish a 
rhythm for the development team and the user community that fits the best 
with the tides of humanity instead of trying to swim against them.  My 
inner Taoist is very pleased.  :)

-- 
</chris>

** I finally have all of my nearby relatives on broadband.  Now to get 
them all to have wireless so I don't have to plug into the Ethernet...

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)