[development] Why Drupal 4.7 is late? (long)

[Bèr Kessels]

Thank you Karoly, for this very well written mail! It clarifies a lot. 

But, (as always) I'd like to play the devils advocate here.
As I recently wrote on my blog [1] there are a few things to consider:
* Its done when its done is not a good attitude hen you want to keep 
professionals (aka those-with-agendas-plannings-and-deadlines) on board. They 
need insurance that their project can go live on Date X.
* If you want people to help fixing bugs in HEAD, you must allow them to use 
head for development. IE: make it as stable as possible and give insurance 
about when things will be done. 
* If you don't provide that certainty, professional developers will have to 
decide to develop on and for the last stable release. Hence pulling away 
resources that *could* have helped with the HEAD. That could have fixed 
numerous bugs. I still see lots of 4.6 modules being released. Meaning that 
people still do no trust HEAD. 

So, I am not debating against the points you make. For the reasons you give 
for why we are where we are  are very well put, and very true. I just hope, 
sincerely, that we learn from this; and never ever make the almost classic 
OSS mistake to slip in huge changes in the end. Again. And that we could 
reconsider some of our release cycle methods. For, I fear this is not a 
standalone incident, but, with the growth-rate of Drupal will rather become 
standard. Meaning there will probably be no 4.8 before 2007/8.


> Ps. If anyone wants to start bitching around "you should have released
> without form API", then first please show your comment with a September
> date asking for that on Drupal.org -- I met none in the roadmap posts or
> the form API thread.
This, however, is the only part I really disagree with. We all know that the 
FormAPI was met with great Resistance (hefty discussions at the 
drupalconference). Should we all archive our concerns? I am sure, that on 
IRC, in mails and maybe evenon Drupal.org I have been against this big change 
at the end of the cycle. But that does not mean that I had to (try to) stop 
the patch from going in, does it?
Should we always vote against things that we a) do not yet fully understand or 
b) do not agree upon?
It is a bad thing, IMO to have to -1 all decisions, that one does not really 
understand but that 'might possibly have a great impact, of which one thinks, 
it might turn out negative'. In that case one should not vote. Which, is not 
the same as a +1 !

[1] http://www.webschuur.com/node/410

Bèr
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