KDE 4.1 planning

[Matt Rogers]

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On Jan 7, 2008, at 3:04 PM, Sebastian Kügler wrote:

> On Monday 07 January 2008 18:14:04 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
>> On Monday 07 January 2008, Sebastian Kügler wrote:
>>> - Release 6-monthly, that would align us with downstream (distros)
>>> - Release 9-monthly, that would align us with upstream (Qt at  
>>> least, not
>>> sure about X, and its relevance in this context)
>>
>> thing is that 4.4 will be out this quarter. if 4.1 was done in ~6  
>> months
>> and then we go to a 9 month cycle after that, we'll align pretty  
>> well with
>> new Qt versions coming out a few months before KDE versions.
>
> Yep, that way thing would fall into place neatly.
>
>>> I'm slightly leaning towards 6 months, hoping that this would  
>>> give us
>>> back some traction with 'larger' distros which we seem to be losing
>>> lately.
>>
>> lately? and it's because of a six month release cycle?
>
> Not sure about the root cause here, but Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu  
> have 6
> months schedules. For them, it's an advantage to have a new desktop  
> version
> every release. Having a 9 month schedule makes that align less  
> neatly. For
> the distros, it's a plus to have a fresh upstream product to  
> integrate every
> half year. They could even shift their schedule in a way that the  
> desktop is
> both fresh enough and well-integrated as they need.
> Of course, those reasons apply in pretty much the same way if we s/ 
> distros/KDE
> and s/KDE/Qt.
>

Why exactly do the distros matter when planning our releases? (I know  
I've asked this and it's been explained before, but I still don't get  
it. Perhaps I never will.) If you're just proposing a 6 month release  
schedule because that's what the distros do, well, then that's a load  
of bunk, IMHO. If you're proposing a 6 month release schedule because  
you think it provides good sustainable pace for the majority of us,  
then that's an actual reason.


>> note that no matter
>> which 6 month release cycle we pick there will be N-(N-1) distros  
>> that we
>> don't align with perfectly, where N is the number of interesting  
>> distros
>> since pretty well none of them follow the same release timing afaik.
>
> That's actually surprisingly not true :-)
>
> openSUSE 11: May - July (no exact date known yet)
> Fedora 9:    29 April 2008
> Ubuntu 8.04: April 2008
>
> So it is possible to 'somewhat' align with most major distros.
>
> Simplified, 6 months means we choose downstream to align to, 9  
> months means we
> choose upstream. The more exciting /me leans towards 9 months, the  
> 'let's
> keep our distribution channels in mind'-sebas prefers 6.
>

I'd prefer 9 months. As Aaron points out, there's lots of things that  
are nearly there that would be nice to showcase in 6 months, but  
there's also other things that are not. It really depends on how  
important those are vs. the stuff that's nearly ready.

> Note that I deem it *much* more important to settle down to a  
> release schedule
> and stick for that than wether it should be 6 or 9 months.

Right now, I actually lean closer to 7 or 8 months. 6 seems to short  
and 9 seems too long.
- --
Matt


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