[development] is 4.7 too complicated to fix? why not raise funds?

[qomo]

On Mon, 2006-02-20 at 11:35 -0800, qomo wrote:
> a question and some suggestions:
> 
> 1) if we use timed release, and today were the release date, what would
> we release?  (I assume not CVS, since its bugginess changes daily.)
> Would we release 4.7.0b4?  If that's true, why not release 4.7.0b4 and
> call it 4.7?
> 2)  I think it'd be good to call the next release 5.0.  I think this is
> less confusing to the user because 4.6 and 4.7 are so different, so much
> more than 4.5 and 4.6
> 3) If Dries wants to have something the user can see, I'd say then just
> make the new theme.  For example, take the terrific new theme called
> fancy, put some pretty colors on it, and a nice logo.  Whola, a new
> default theme.
> 4) I wonder if  the 4.7 release is being held up by lack of developer
> time to work on bugs, or by a very complicated structure that's making
> it too hard to get the bugs out.  If it's the former, then we have a
> serious problem. If it's the former, I'd suggest (coming from a business
> perspective) that we 
> (a) identify the show-stopper bugs
> (b) estimate how many hours it would take to fix them
> (c) multiply that number by a developer's hourly rate
> (d) put a big button on top of drupal.org asking for donations.
> 
> e.g. 
> (a) there are 3 show stopper bugs
> (b) 16 hours each
> (c) 48 * 100 = $4800
> (d) put on a big button on top of home page saying if each person
> donates 10 to 30 dollars, we would only need 240 people to donate.
> that's less than 10% of people browsing the site at this very minute.
> 
> sorry, I'm not a developer, so this idea may be based on ignorance.
> but as someone who is not a developer, I now think it's less confusing
> to call the next release 5.0 because of all the new powerful features
> being added (and will be added due to the power of form api) than to
> call it 4.7.
> 
> Ann
>