On Sun, 2009-09-13 at 23:09 -0500, Ted Gould wrote:
On Sat, 2009-09-12 at 23:16 -0700, Joshua A. Andler wrote:
One thing that Debian is considering is fixed dates for freezes. So they'd do a freeze on a fixed schedule, and then release when it's ready. I'm curious if this might work for us long term, certainly with a DVCS we'd have more flexibility there.
Interesting approach... I think that this may work for us too after 0.49 since it may be a little unpredictable with the library changes.
It'd probably be a good idea after 0.49, yes, after major tasks such as library change is complete.
Open source projects often push back the release date so that they can stabilize all the features they have added during the development cycle (and even then, some don't make it on time anyway).
To the user, the choice is pretty simple though: - In 6 months, you get to access Feature A, and 6 months after that, you get to access Feature B, or: - You get to access Features A and B in 1 year.
Those 6 months with "just" Feature A isn't pointless, it may mean hours of work saved, or that the user could accomplish things that he couldn't have otherwise. For some users, the absence of a crucial feature can be just as crippling as a bug.
Good thing for the Development version, though that's not a solution for everybody.