[Qgis-developer] Release schedule discussion - again

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi all,

I know - this discussion came up repeatedly in the past - but here I am, 
bringing it up again. Jürgen - please don't shoot me ;-)

As a QGIS user in government (you could also replace this by a company 
or other professional users) I find the 4 month release schedule not 
ideal - and quite stressful. I would rather prefer a half-year or yearly 
release and then proper bug-fix releases. I also find the one month 
window for testing/bug fixing too short.

I think QGIS arrived at a stage where we have a lot of features, but we 
still fight with quality. Every 4-month release has different bugs and 
the first LTS version was not much different (quality wise). After 2-3 
bug-fix releases it now arrived at a stage where the quality is quite 
ok. But unfortunately this can't be said for the 4-month releases that 
may or may not receive updates.

So should we really keep this fast release cycle with releases every 4 
months with the risk that these in between releases are barely usable 
for professional users or should we rather have one release every 6 to 
12 months and invest more (financial) resources into these fewer 
releases? I would personally vote for fewer releases and increased QA 
resources. Maybe change to a release every 6 months with four months of 
development and 2 months of bug fixing/testing - and see how this works?

Andreas