While we're on the subject of changing the supported release process, we could use this opportunity to lower the number of signatures required for a release.
While we never failed to meet the current requirements eventually, our release process could be faster if less signatures were required. My suggestion would be: ASF guidelines require a minimum of signatures from 3 different people in total (including the release manager). To this, we could add our requirement of cross-platform signatures, where at least one signature must count for a Windows system, and at least one must count for a Unix-like system. Of course, more than 3 signatures are always welcome. We could also reserve an option for the RM to decide to publish a release with 3 signatures for any platforms, based on the RM's judgement of the situation (e.g. if a patch release only contained code changes inside #ifdef WIN32, Unix signatures could be skipped). I believe this change would help us with meeting the new 6 months schedule. I see *no* need to change our patch backport voting rules, by the way.
