Change release schedule 4.2 and schedule for 4.3

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Sunday 07 September 2008, Tom Albers wrote:
> At Sunday 07 September 2008 17:27, you wrote:
> > While the 4.1 and 4.2 releases need to come out quickly to fix the early
> > porting issues, the case is less so for 4.3. I would instead recommend
> > that the release schedule for 4.3 be increased: from 6 months to 8 or 9.
>
> That's a discussion which can go to release-team mailinglist. We have
> decided a year ago that we would use a six month schedule. I've seen no
> reason to move to a 8 or 9 month cycle.

alignment with Qt is one good reason here. and as long as development is tied 
to release schedules, i'd love to see a slightly longer cycle every so often. 
4.3 would be pretty good timing for both those things.

i'm increasingly viewing development-tied-to-resleaes as a stupid idea but 
it's the reality we deal with for 4.2 and probably 4.3.

> I think it is very important for
> KDE to release at predictable times. 

agreed; changing the schedule on us, the developers (aka "the most valuable 
resource KDE has") is really not great.

the PIM team has spoken up, but they aren't the only ones. the Plasma team has 
put together a set of development plans for 4.2 which would need to be 
rethought given a shortened schedule.

it's really not a nice thing to do to the developers who have been banking on 
the reliability of the release schedule to up and change it on us.

we can discuss 4.3, but IMHO 4.2 is a closed topic.

> Other projects might want to make a
> planning depending on our release, or are already doing that. Changing our
> release schedule at each release makes us unpredictable in that regard.

unlike changing our 4.2 release? *sigh*

> Besides that, a few months ago Aaron suggested yet another schedule which
> suited him better.

... which requires decoupling release from development cycles. it's a long 
term plan and has no bearing on this discussion.

> > Also note that Qt has a 8-10 month release schedule.
>
> Again, if there is any real advantage lineing up with that schedule, please
> come to the release-team mailinglist and convince us.

KDE 4.2 with Qt 4.5 really ought to be enough in this case.

we can then discuss what to do with 4.3, but i'd personally prefer to see a 
statement on 4.2's schedule first so we can either continue to discuss it more 
(if it is indeed changing) or start discussing 4.3 (if the 4.2 schedule will 
revert to the original)

> It would take much to convince me personally to use another schedule then
> six months for reasons explained above.

of course, the release team has already changed that with a non 6 month period 
for 4.2. so there is obviously flexibility. it's just a question if whether 
being flexible because of the timing of Akademy is more or less useful and 
important than current schedules projects such as PIM and Plasma have already 
lid out and taking advantage of Qt 4.5.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-core-devel/attachments/20080908/d181fcdf/attachment.sig>