Release timing

[Christopher Hicks]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005, Gervase Markham wrote:
> "Remind me why delivering sooner than six months after the release we just 
> did is a good thing?"

It may not be the ideal thing, but it seems better than the alternatives. 
Getting on a release rhythm may entail some occassional irritation, but I 
do think its worth the trouble.

>> Dave has indicated that the freezes will be timed, not the releases so 
>> basing dates off of the release date does not fit with the logic that Dave 
>> feels was agreed upon.
>
> I'm suggesting that we revisit that logic. One can make an argument for 
> "releases every X months", for most sane values of X, but I can't see an 
> argument for "freezes every X months". How is the date of a freeze 
> important? Surely it's the release date you are trying to hit that's the 
> important thing.

Having the freeze dates be something that people know from remember when 
it happened last year seems more important than exactly when we release to 
the world.  As long as there's been a release in the last year the user is 
going to feel like we're making progress, but the developers care about 
the exact freeze data because presumably they have something that they 
want in before the freeze.

>> I've proposed a solution to this - have some releases be supported longer 
>> than others.  Some people need long-term stability (ala RHES).
>
> We could do that, but it might get a bit confusing. Having release X still 
> supported while X+1 is not might lead to some strange conversations.
> "I need help with release X+1".
> "Sorry, it's not supported."
> "Yeah, but release X from six months before is supported! How is it hard to 
> support release X+1?"
> "Er..."

Instead of "er" you could say "Release X and X+3, and X+4 are supported, 
please help us to minimize the hassle of voluntarily maintaining bugzilla 
by using one of those.  Oh, by the way, X+3 is our next long-term stable 
release, so you'll be able to get support for it for a couple years."

> In practice, we'd end up supporting any release more recent than the 
> oldest supported release.

If people ignored the idea and went on doing what they've been doing then 
certainly practice would not exhibit the idea.

> But I'd certainly support this model over a "everything supported for 18 
> months" model if we are releasing as often as seems to be the plan.

Thanks.

-- 
</chris>

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