On Wednesday 10 July 2013, William A. Rowe Jr. wrote: > On Wed, 10 Jul 2013 21:18:06 +1000 > > Noel Butler <noel.but...@ausics.net> wrote: > > on holiday with a dog slow 3G vpn tonight, so I'll be brief (and > > wont see any replies until I return on Sunday...) > > > > I have never agreed with any "release often" principle, a project > > that releases often (more than a few times a year) to me says > > "immature instability" compared to a project that releases once > > or twice a year (barring critical bug resolutions) - IOW, > > release when necessary not just because its a "cool thing to > > do". Take dovecot for instance, we stayed on the stable 1.2 > > series for more than a year after it was EOL, because its 2.0.x > > kept having fixes and releases every couple of weeks for a > > while, admins dont like that, it gives them no warm feelings > > towards stability. > > On the other hand, waiting 6 mos for a 'complete' release also > implies that users are waiting for other fixes for 5 months. > Reviewing CHANGES helps admins to determine if those fixes in a > more frequent release cadence do address specific needs of each > specific admin. > > > WRT slow take up of 2.4.x, I agree, the incentive (as was > > discussed 2 years or so ago) was to EOL 2.0, and what needs > > doing now, is starting the countdown to EOL of 2.2 - if there's > > no incentive to move, twenty years of history proves most admins > > wont. > > Please keep an eye out, as Steffan has, for anywhere we are still > presenting the 2.2 branch as 'stable' or implying that it is > current. > > In practice, 2.2 is the stable release, from what users experience.
This stems in part from the > 5 years between 2.2 and 2.4. 2.4 simply takes some time to stabilize. 2.2 did so, too (at the company I was working for at the time, we started adoption with 2.2.8 or so). > The post from the modperl project relayed by Jim this past week is > very welcome news, for getting 2.4 adopted by downstream packagers! And the other part of the problems is distributions not picking 2.4 up early because of mod_perl missing and/or because of 2.4 being released at an unfortunate point of time in the distribution's own release cycle. > But the thread is largely about how long an offer to RM should be > considered 'valid', vs. having another prospective RM pick up the > baton and run with a new release. We all get busy, and as active > volunteers we tend to over-commit and under-deliver. If STATUS > were devoid of 'Bill claims the baton' messages, will others step > up to RM more frequently? You are asking the question, 'should we > RM more frequently or avoid frequent releases?' Based on the > history and early adoption of both 2.0 and 2.2, I'd suggest that > frequent releases do contribute to adoption. I would also prefer more frequent releases, at least 4 per year. But I agree with other answers that the problem is lack of time of committers and not that one person has claimed the baton. Cheers, Stefan
