Boy, you _are_ a little frustrated. I think it will help to have the schedule of the release. No one can claim IBM has a secret agenda if the time line is laid out there. And it's easy to wink if no one has any idea what the deadlines we're working toward are.
I propose for 1.2 we drive it more by time than by features. That is, we lay out a schedule including builds every 2-3 weeks, initially milestone builds, becoming beta and RC builds. We try to get people to test and provide feedback on the builds as we go, and we expect that we'll have some issues early to mid-way through the process but have clear dates for feature freeze, no bugs fixes except blockers, branch for the next release, etc. We may have to adjust the schedule depending on what develops, but at least we'll know what we're targeting at all times. Then we'll have to huddle after the 1.2 release and decide whether this was an improvement over the 1.1 process or not, and decide how to go for 1.3/2.0. I ended up using the SuSE 10.1 betas and RC's during their dev/test/release process, and it went very much like the above (including at least one adjustment to the schedule in mid-stream). But it was nice to have a schedule laid out, to always be able to see the date the next test build was expected, etc. I'd like to give it a try. We may have to play things a little by ear in deciding how to deal with plugins and which releases we try to create in-place upgrades for (vs. fresh install only), but I think that's all manageable. Thanks, Aaron P.S. Maybe we'll get to see if the "Chariot agenda" is any better than the "IBM agenda." :) On 6/8/06, Matt Hogstrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I previously sent out an e-mail regarding the freezing of the branches/1.1 code so we can march to a release. I expect you could tell by the tone of the e-mail that I was very frustrated. My frustration arose from a private e-mail asking if IBM had some secret agenda and if that was the reason I was trying to move the release out. This really set me off. You will have to be the judge as to whether IBM yields any undue influence on the project; I believe the answer is no. From my perspective, IBM goes out of its way to make sure we do not "force" the community. We carefully consider how we interact in the community. not only about how we conduct ourselves but what the appearance of our actions might be perceived. Yes, we base a server offering on Geronimo and we do have a vested interest in seeing the project succeed; however, so do a number of other companies. It is always a challenge to balance contribution and influence to ensure your growing the ecosystem and I think we do a damn good job of it. IMHO we actually are too conservative. The reason I'm trying to move the release along is because it has been OVER FIVE MONTHS since we have given our users anything else to look at. Does anyone remember who they are? These are the developers who we're trying to create something for. Developers that will be interested in using our project. I don't know about you but in this fast paced world of development people don't sit around waiting for FIVE MONTHS for anything. They will choose something else and then you've lost them. You've broken their confidence on your ability to deliver and consequently they'll be less likely to believe you'll deliver when you say you will. I am not pushing the release because of some secret IBM agenda. I'm embarrassed that WE can't seem to deliver something. Originally we said end of January and then discovered that we had some refactoring to do. It will only take a few weeks we thought. Two months later (and stalled development on new innovation) we set a target date of April 28th. Yes, I chose the date but it was four weeks from the day I suggested it; we seemed to have consensus. Unfortunately we found that our changes (they were the right thing to do) caused us lots of heart burn in CTS testing. Few people were able to help with that for whatever reason so it was a long slow grind. We burned up April and then started into May. Java One was in there for a week so we basically lost two more weeks. Continuing to try and get a release out we've diagnosed performance problems, survived an SVN outage at Apache, a Codehaus outage, I've written numerous e-mails about getting 1.1 out and yet we are still not in lock step as to what we're trying to accomplish. In short, yes, I am frustrated not because some secret IBM plan is not coming to fruition but because the community, of which I am apart, is dysfunctional to the point of laughability. We are now under Review and Commit. We're not doing well there either but that is likely a separate thread for discussion. I know we're a volunteer organization but I hope that being part of a project makes us a team. If we cannot begin to operate like a team its going to be a slow painful process. So, to answer the question about why I'm pushing to get a release out, there is no secret IBM plot. I simply want to get this release out to break the log jam on development. In one e-mail thread it was posed that new features were being added to a frozen branch and that was met with a wink. One person simply said maybe we need balance, will you help me on the next release? Wow, what about this one. Are we a team or a bunch of people that act as an Army of One. I'll post another note with the schedule of the release. Yes, I'm frustrated. I know others are as well. Matt
