[OpenLayers-Dev] moving OL to a scheduled release cycle

[Schuyler Erle]

Some Free Software projects have benefitted from the use of scheduled
releases, as a way of focusing community effort and ensuring that stable
releases with the latest features and bug fixes are available on a
timely and frequent basis. Our experience trying to get 2.4 out the door
has been very educational, and suggests to me that it may be of service
to the OpenLayers project to transition to this type of development
model.

I would like to propose that OpenLayers adopt a two month development
cycle -- roughly six weeks of active feature development, followed by a
code freeze, and two weeks of release candidate testing. Since 2.4 was
released in the first week of June, I recommend that we fix mid-July as
a deadline for the 2.5 code freeze, and aim to have OpenLayers 2.5
released in the first week of August. Subsequent releases would be timed
for the first week of even-numbered months (with 2.6 in October and 2.7
or 3.0 in December).

Does anyone have any comments or feedback on this idea? I'd like to know
if there's any traction in the community before we go with a PSC vote.
Thanks!

SDE