KDE release cycles?

[dE .]

On 04/05/12 13:57, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> On Thursday, 2012-04-05, Duncan wrote:
>> dE . posted on Thu, 05 Apr 2012 07:23:16 +0530 as excerpted:
>>> So 'feature release' may mean (apart form including absolutely new
>>> features) -
>>>
>>> 1) Restructuring the code (better management).
>>> 2) New backend or changed backend which may increase or decrease bugs.
>>>
>>> And bug fixes mean fixing small time bugs in library or directly in the
>>> app.
>> I'll let Kevin respond to that (tho it seems a reasonable summary to this
>> non-dev, here),
> I agree. My guess is that the term "feature release" is used to indicate that
> this is not just the same thing again.
>
>  From a developer's perspective it just means that restrictions on what you can
> do are less tight. There are still things that are not allowed, e.g. changing
> libraries in a way that makes them incompatible with applications, but on the
> application level you can do almost anything you want.
>
>> but there is certainly one practical limitation of the
>> bugfix releases as opposed to feature releases:
>>
>> * Strings are generally frozen during a six-month bugfix series.  This is
>> to help the various l10n (localization, basically, translation) efforts,
>> but it DOES mean a tradeoff in terms of fixing things "properly"
>> sometimes, if that would mean a UI and string change, even if the actual
>> code fix is reasonably small and "safe" and would otherwise be allowed.
> Yes, very good observation. Sometimes an essential bug fix needs a string
> change, in which case the translators usually grant an exception [1].
>
>> This is actually one reason the distros tend to ship later bugfix
>> releases instead of newer feature releases
> One additional thing might be that distributions themselves use a very similar
> development and release model so they have a better understanding what each
> step along the way carries with it.
>
> Early bug fix releases of a feature release are basically more like the public
> beta of proprietary software, i.e. the beta releases of Free Software products
> (and of distributions which do such things) are more like the interal or
> private beta.

'Early bug fix' release? I thought that bug fix releases were the minor 
versions like 4.8.1, or 4.8.2 etc...
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