the "gamma" proposal - details that need working out

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Sunday 08 July 2007, Tom Albers wrote:
> Op vr 6 jul 2007 18:55 schreef u:
> > The point of gamma1 however is to
> > have every developer porting their stuff to kde 4 full time,
>
> We have said that for the technical preview, alfa1 and for beta1 (which is
> alpha 2 now). Not again. Some developers have a planning and want to get a
> release so they can start new features. Delaying this hurts the Good Guys
> and rewards the Bad Guys.

this is misrepresented. and as such i would agree with you, Tom. but the 
reality is much simpler and clearer:

- to do Mountainview we need a date set in stone.
- to do KDE 4.0 properly, we need to the ability to say if needed "we have 
showstoppers, we can't release for another 2 weeks"

this causes a problem. and marketing can not, should not and will not drive 
our technology program and schedules. therefore, the idea is to have 
a "gamma" which is "4.0 as we see it, but it's not officially announced to 
the world yet". we encourage distros, users, etc to use it, but this lets us 
start organizing, say, 1 month in advance of release for a big release event 
3 months later (so 2 months after release if everything goes perfectly).

the side benefits (e.g. stabilization, additional porting, blah blah blah) are 
just that: side benefits.

the main purpose is to allow marketing to be as powerful and successful as 
possible without making demands on the technology. this is, imho, one more 
step toward externalizing OUR methods to the world.

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

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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