[QGIS-Developer] "Early Adopter" release

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Patrick,

QGIS 3.x has major changes under the hood:

- Change from qt4 to qt5

- QGIS internal API changes

- Change from Python 2 to Python 3

- Completely rewritten: QGIS server, Print composer/layouts, Processing

- All Python plugins have to be changed and adopted to the above listed 
changes

With so many changes it is only expected that new issues and problems 
arise with the introduction of QGIS 3. That's why QGIS 3 is named "early 
adopter release". On the other hand the devs, and also co-funded by 
QGIS.ORG, invested a lot of time in fixing issues. And maybe you have 
noticed that QGIS 3.2 doesn't have this label any more.

Version 3.4 is planned as an LT release. 3.4 is scheduled for end of 
October. See 
https://qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/development/roadmap.html#release-schedule

So with 3.4 we expect to be on  a stable, at least as good (but most 
likely much better) than 2.18, which is our previous LT release. If you 
are cautious and need to rely on stable versions, I recommend rolling 
out 3.4 after one or two bug fix releases, so maybe at the end of year 2018.

However, I personally used version 3.x for quite a long time and I am 
quite happy with it. Also note, that you can always install and use QGIS 
2.x and 3.x in parallel.

---------------

As to your other question: "when do you expect to have made major 
inroads into the bugs backlog":

This is a hard question. The bug queue will never be empty and always 
contain open issues. On the other hand, there are also issues in the 
queue that are hard or impossible to reproduce and the bug reporter did 
not provide enough information to fix the issues.

The QGIS.ORG project is investing a five-figure Euro investment (usually 
15-40k €) for each release to pay a few core developers to fix the most 
pressing issues. We do realize that this is not enough, but it is the 
best we can do with the limited funds. To help improve the situation, we 
encourage users of QGIS to do either of the following:

- help improve the quality of bug reports (really, it can help a lot if 
bug reporters do an effort to describe the issues well enough to 
reproduce, including data and a project file

- become a sponsor (see 
https://www.qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/governance/sponsorship/sponsorship.html#qgis-sponsorship-program 
and 
https://www.qgis.org/en/site/about/sponsorship.html#sponsors-and-donors 
for our list of current sponsors, ideally with an annual renewal commitment

- become a one-time donor

- establish a support contract with a company, preferable with a company 
that has core QGIS commiters. See 
https://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/commercial_support.html#core-contributors 
- with such a contract you can prioritize

- hire a developers to specifically fix the issues you have (or if you 
have the skills, you can fix issues yourself)

Or any combination of the above. If a large enough number of users 
supports us in one or more of the above ways, I am sure we can keep QGIS 
in a good shape for many years to come.

It is the users who decide about the fate of QGIS. If the users stop to 
support QGIS, QGIS will die. If enough users will support QGIS, it will 
thrive, as I think it did in the past couple years.

Hope this information helps,

Greetings from Andreas
(QGIS PSC member)



Am 07.07.2018 um 06:20 schrieb Patrick Dunford:
> Can someone please explain to me why Qgis 3.0 banner is named "early 
> adopter release"
>
> In other words what stage of development is Qgis 3.0 expected to be at 
> in terms of user experience.
>
> As a related question how many bugs do you expect to fix for each 
> release and at what point do you expect to have made major inroads 
> into the bugs backlog.
>
> Thanks
>
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