Initial revision of KDE 4.1 schedule available on Techbase

[Torsten Rahn]

> On Wednesday 13 February 2008 14:43:05 Torsten Rahn wrote:
> > I think that the points of times for freezes and their definitions as
> > suggested by Matt are quite good actually. I just feel that people won't
> > get into release mode this fast, so we need to have a "real" alpha
> > release in March first (and basically call your Alpha1 a Beta 1, etc.).
> My impression (and the one of other, I gathered that from past discussions)
> is that two months to stabilise a 4.x release should really be enough. More
> time in freeze is not a good thing.

Well, if you read my last mail closely you'll realize that I didn't suggest to 
change anything about the freeze milestones that Matt has suggested. However 
my suggestion was to have another release in March to get people into release 
mode early and to give users a chance to test new stuff early to be able to 
provide feedback and to give developers time to adjust to the feedback. With 
the current schedule I don't see this chance. 
Looking back it has always taken considerable time to get people to realize 
that now it's time to stop work on new stuff and to start work on bugfixing 
and polishing things. An early alpha would provide this clue.
While with the development of LiveCDs it's much easier for people to test and 
follow KDE's  progress it still takes a release to get the public's attention 
and the awareness of testers that "this development state" is supposed to be 
where the software is about to head and that the testers better give feedback 
now if they feel that stuff is wrong instead of hesitating.
Looking back at e.g. the KDE 2.1 schedule which worked really well I notice 
that the first Beta there happened exactly 2.5 months before the actual 
release (i.e. December 18th, Beta 2 was on January 31st and KDE  2.1 on 
February 26th. So far the KDE 2.1 has been the most fast tracked release in 
KDE's history and given that KDE has grown quite a bit I'd consider it a true 
challenge to release within such a short time frame again while still 
delivering a quality release.

-- 
 Torsten Rahn

 Tel.: 0 21 61 - 46 43 - 192

credativ GmbH, HRB Mönchengladbach 12080
Hohenzollernstr. 133, 41061 Mönchengladbach
Geschäftsführung: Dr. Michael Meskes, Jörg Folz