* Dave Neary <dneary(a)redhat.com> [2012-08-21 08:42]:
>I am not sure we must have new features in each release, a
release of
>bug fixes seems also reasonable to me. Why not keep it only time-based
>release regardless of commitments for new features for the release.
I like giving people good reasons to upgrade, but also good reasons
to install the current version - and in terms of communication, if
we say that 3.2 will be "3.1, with lots of bug fixes", and that it
will be along in 3 months, why would anyone install 3.1? We've just
said it's a buggy release that will soon be obsoleted anyway.
IMHO, it's better to say "here's what 3.1 does well, here's what 3.2
will be able to do that 3.1 doesn't". I'm not suggesting a
revolution with every release, but one thing which is identifiable
as "new in 3.2" doesn't seem like a lot to ask.
Definitely agree with this approach. We always want something new for
the next release.
It's probably worth keeping a list of features from each of the
sub-projects as a potential next-release feature list. And with a
defined release cycle, we can see which features will make the cut prior
to a feature-freeze date.
IMHO, one of our challenges is actually enumerating all of the potential
features. I think there are lots of features under development, but I
don't think we're collecting all of that info in a single place where
you can get a view of potential features in the various sub-projects.
That said, I have previously worked on a project, where we had one
full release cycle whose goal was "make it work better on Linux",
and it was a very positive release cycle, lots of new contributors
and energy, because it was a goal people cared about. So purely
bug-fix & stabilisation releases can work, if you have a measurable
goal to compare against.
>We can ask what new features are planned/expected to be pushed in the
>near future, if we get reply with a lot of features then we can call it
>major version (4.0) if we get only minor features we can use a minor
>version (3.2, 3.3, etc).
I don't care about major/minor versions - I have been in far too
many discussions in both GNOME and GIMP on whether a release is
"worth" a new major version. Personally, I have a view which is much
like that of Queen Victoria towards bathing: I'm happy with
incrementing the major version every year or two, whether it's
needed or not.
+1
Cheers,
Dave.
--
Dave Neary
Community Action and Impact
Open Source and Standards Team, Red Hat
Phone: +33 9 50 71 55 62
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Ryan Harper
Software Engineer; Linux Technology Center
IBM Corp., Austin, Tx
ryanh(a)us.ibm.com