[Qgis-developer] Release schedule discussion - again

[Jürgen E. Fischer]

Hi Andreas,

On Mon, 12. Oct 2015 at 13:47:03 +0200, Andreas Neumann wrote:
> 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 if that would help - there are far too many people out there ;)  I just
wonder why this needs to be discussed again shortly before a release.

And I don't actually see any new points - this has been discussed before and I
never saw any striking arguments that would really make it clear that four
months is too short, while six months would be all that different.

That the initial LTR release wasn't any different from the other releases
stability-wise is correct.  But should it?  We maintain it for a year - and
that's the difference.

That bugs pop up shortly after the release is probably unavoidable unless it
gets intensive testing.   Otherwise the people testing (although they probably
just want to use) a new release will easily outnumber the people testing and
fixing it before the release and hence might find serious things right after
the release - or even before we have all the packages ready.

I guess that's why we always had point releases right after the .0 releases and
I don't think that will change with a switch to a six month schedule.

> 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.

For those there is the LTR.  That's who we make it for.  If not even those are
using it, why do we make it at all?   

You might say that you can't wait twelve month for new features you fund.
Right, and that's why the release schedule is as short as it is.  It's to make
new features available in a release relatively quickly.   But if it's four or
six month isn't a big difference there either.

If we released every 6 months, how long would we maintain the LTR?  Still a
year and every second release is a LTR?  Or still every third release?

I don't really care that much if we release on a four or six month schedule
(ubuntu does six monthly releases too).


Jürgen

-- 
Jürgen E. Fischer           norBIT GmbH             Tel. +49-4931-918175-31
Dipl.-Inf. (FH)             Rheinstraße 13          Fax. +49-4931-918175-50
Software Engineer           D-26506 Norden             http://www.norbit.de
QGIS release manager (PSC)  Germany                    IRC: jef on FreeNode                         
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