David Reed wrote:
A BIG +1 on the idea of time-boxing the release cycles. I think this has a lot of benefits over the current approach.
IMHO
1. It helps to create a sense of stability around the product.
Huh? I've never thought of Drupal as being particularly unstable.
2. It alleviates some (not all) of the when-will-release-X-be-done questions.
Heh, here aren't that many of them. Nobody dares to ask twice.
3. It helps businesses that rely on Drupal better plan their own Drupal-based initiatives
Those mysterious businesses better go into a serious bug squashing frenzy if they want me to care for their problems.
4. It adds a certain amount of structure to the development life-cycle 5. It helps contributors because knowing the schedule they can focus their efforts on the things that are most important to them for THAT release
This doesn't make too much sense.
I know there are down-sides as well. I think the added structure would require more effort to manage. I've seen some OS projects employ a rotating release-coordinator so that burden is shared.
I am all in favour of release-early-release-often, but I don't care too much about the development model. The only thing I know is that there are a lot of people who could review or provide more patches... Cheers, Gerhard