Proposed adjustments to our release cycles

[Ben]

On 06/16/2012 09:44 PM, Inge Wallin wrote:
> My problem is with the second.  While some people always want to have the
> latest and greatest, I wonder what it will do to stability. You didn't write
> anything above about how many bugfix updates any given version would receive.
> The shorter the release cycles, the fewer the number of bugfix releases. If
> not, we would have to maintain several active branches at the same time, which
> would increase overhead a lot.  Somebody else mentioned translations, which is
> another related issue.
>
> The reasoning behind the move towards shorter release cycles is exactly the
> opposite of how large organizations reason when they select software. Remember
> the outcry when Firefox went to its current way of releasing. When Brazil
> rolls out KDE to 24 million users, they don't want to have to update that
> every 2-4 months.
>
> It seems to me that a current trend in larger free software projects is to go
> to a 6-9 month release schedule with a kind of "Long Term Support" release
> once in a while (every 2 years?). If we shorten the release cycles (an idea
> which I am actually not that fond of) then could we also consider to have an
> LTS release now and then?
>

+1 from a user who's also more interested in bug fixes and stability 
than quickly releasing new features. It would very nice to have some LTS 
code that's maintained and bug fixed for a longer period of time.

Just one perspective from a user lurking on the list.

-Ben