Releases in 3 months

[Ben]

On 07/15/2013 05:54 AM, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> We are experimenting with the idea of a “long term release” version with kde-
> workspace. If 4.11 gets widely used, deployed and stabalized (as we hope it
> will) then blessing specific releases for extended #s of releases may be a good
> approach.
>
> Right now we treat all releases as equal: every 6 month release is as
> important and as recommended as the one before it.
>
> With Plasma Desktop 4.11,  that will no longer be the case for Plasma
> Workspaces. We are recommending that version above others, before before and
> after, for deployment purposes.
>
> So if we do 3 month *development* cycles, but bless just one of the resulting
> *releases* each year as “this is the one you want to use if you are looking
> for stability”, perhaps then backporting efforts could focus on that one
> release.
>
> Under that regimen, we might not even have bug fix releases except for that one
> version. It could work like this:
>
> January: Release x.y is made, marked as an “annual” release, x.(y+1) starts
> February: x.y.1 featuring backports from x.(y+1)
> March: x.y.2 featuring backports from x.(y+1)
> April: x.(y+1) and  x.y.3 released; x.(y+2) starts
> Mayt: x.y.4 featuring backports from x.(y+2)
> June: x.y.5 featuring backports from x.(y+2)
> July: x.(y+2) and  x.y.6
> .. etc.
>
> These “long term release” versions could happen every 6 months, every 9
> months, every 12 months, every 24 months or whatever else strikes our fancy.
>
> With this concept instead of caring about x.y and x.(y-1),  developers would
> instead care about the last long term release and the current devel cycle.
> This would mean developers would care about the same number of releases (e.g.
> 2) but  for different time spans than they do now.
>
> Bug fix releases for non-long-term-releases wouldn’t happen; you’d need to
> upgrade to the next release to get fixes or install the last long-term release.

Again, just one user's thoughts, but I love the idea of a 
long-term-release version of KDE that's supported with bug-fixes but no 
new features for a year.

-Ben