Stefan Taxhet wrote:

Welcome to Open Source 101: "Release Early, Release Often"

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html



That's what we are doing with the developer snapshots since years.
May be they need some more visibility even if they are not in beta quality?

Sounds like it. I had no idea that there were frequent releases. Where would I find it? Seeing frequent updates would be a good step towards encouraging greater community participation.


I recently suggested that we could have a "testing" branch (name inspired by Debian). It'd be something between "stable" and "development". Right now, "stable" gets updated every 3-4 months, and new new features are added. Just bug fixes (some times). "Development" is not beta quality, and it gets updated every week. Maybe we should have a middle point. A "testing" branch that gets updated (say) every 3 weeks. It'd include new features, but yet would be "reasonably stable". Sort of beta quality.

What do you think?

I think that would go very well. A potential countributor would see their contribution see the light of day a lot sooner. Users would get a "fairly good" product that still incorporates new features fairly quickly. A lot of us would love that. And we have the understanding that the user accepts the increased risk from deviating from the stable branch.

From what I hear, the Ximian branch could be very close to what Sun employees would consider "testing". If we're lucky, perhaps this opens a path for closer integration with Novell/Ximian.

Okay, I'll go crazy for a second. What if the Ximian guys were in charge of the "testing" branch, but otherwise it's all in the same CVS. If Novell or Red Hat decide they want to use the "testing" branch on their final product, that's their choice.

Just a thought. Tell me what you think.

Cheers,
Daniel.

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Digital Distribution Global Training Services Pty. Ltd.
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