Release schedule for Plasma Next

[Martin Gräßlin]

On Friday 31 January 2014 14:34:59 Eike Hein wrote:
> On Thursday 30 January 2014 18:23:41 Martin Graesslin wrote:
> > > Is Alpha unstable code? A release that contains known critical bugs? why
> > > do
> > > we release them? Are distros going to package Alphas?
> > > Is Beta unstable code? A release that contains known critical bugs? why
> > > do
> > > we release them? Are distros going to package Betas?
> > > 
> > > I'm sure that the answer to those questions depends on the user, and no
> > > matter what communication effort we do people will continue having their
> > > definitions of betas and alphas.
> > > 
> > > Personally I think we should do a number of pre-releases without any
> > > special name, and the moment we think Plasma2 is stable we tag RC1.
> > 
> > I like this idea! +1
> 
> I don't, personally. I think that words have meanings between
> people, and that names are an opportunity to communicate.
> 
> "Alpha" and "Beta", while perhaps not the most strictly defined
> words in the language, have a lot of associated meaning among
> the members our audience. It gives them utility, e.g. for mana-
> ging expectations and communicating the relative position of a
> release in its release cycle.

Isn't it better to communicate the meaning through our release announcements 
than through the implied meanings of words like "alpha" and "beta"? I just 
read the wikipedia article [1] for it and from that I assume that everybody in 
our audience has a different expectation and thus we cannot meat the 
expectation if we rely on the meaning.

I prefer that we are verbose and explain what the current development snapshot 
means. Whether we call it "beta", "tech preview", "snapshot" or "goal" doesn't 
matter to me. If people complain that the software is 
<insertrandominsultweheardabout4.0>, we can point to the release announcement 
and show that it holds what we promised.

Cheers
Martin

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle
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