[development] Drupal 6 release schedule

[Zohar Stolar]

Dries Buytaert wrote:

> Hello world,
>
> I'm mailing to talk a bit more about the Drupal 6 release schedule. 
> Drupal 5 had a 3 month development period, followed by a 5 month code 
> freeze.  For Drupal 6, I'd like to propose a 4 month development 
> period, followed by a code freeze.  As with Drupal 5, the code freeze 
> will be guaranteed to be at least 2 months to give module authors time 
> to plan and catch up.  In practice, and depending on the state of 
> Drupal core at the code freeze date, it might take more than two 
> months to get things stable.
>
> Sounds good?
>
> -- 
> Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/
>

I am a developer who considers himself to be at ease with Drupal, but 
far from being an Drupal expert. Drupal is my main development platform, 
and probably as many of you do, I also dream Drupal sometimes :-)
With regards to that - I feel that from 4.7 to 5 Drupal changed in such 
a extreme manner, that it will take most of the developers 4 months only 
to get to know Drupal 5 properly...
Most of Drupal developers are not core developers, and might be 
intimidated by rapid, extreme changes. I'm talking about API, not, for 
example, the CCK integration. Drupal is already reputated to have a slow 
learning curve, and every time you get to the summit, the mountain 
becomes higher :-)

I can see the need to release a newer, better CMS when possible, 
certainly in a very competitive surrounding, and maybe that's the right 
thing to do, ideally. BUT (and here comes the "but"), don't we risk 
being a bit too fast?
The intuitive answer is "No, we found a better way to do things, so why 
wait?!".
I see it a bit like raising a child. You can't always tell him/her 
"that's a better way, do like this". They need time to assimilate and 
absorb. It's healthier for them and their growth would be much more 
stable. The same might be applicable to software. And I could easily 
find an example from climbing too fast and running out of oxygen, or 
from any other fields of interest you may have, just for the sake of 
making things clearer. It's not about not wanting to be higher, but it's 
about doing things the right way. I don't know... maybe I'm just getting 
too old and slow...

Finally, and this relates to a parallel discussion about maintaining 
"old" modules, we must remember that our clients (we do work for them, 
eventually), can not all afford upgrades so often. This might sound 
idiotic, but it must be taken into consideration. Smart clients, and 
most of them are, are studying the market well before investing in such 
a content platform, that is becoming more and more centric in business. 
If we move too fast for modules' maintainers to upgrade their modules, 
we'll end up with a very advanced CMS, but our sites won't survive more 
than a year.

OK - while writing this I already received two excited mails about the 
date (Dries is a year behind, go to sleep... or wake up!  ;-) ), and 
anyway, I'm reaching the midnight barrier where I'm at (remember - no 
posts to the list after midnight for the sake of our sanity :-) ), and I 
wrote too much (maybe I AM becoming too old....), So I'll just finish 
with a small proposition: let's try to at least make n effort and 
prepare the community for the changes. Periodic posts about tendencies 
in the development will soften the shock when D6 lands here.

Good night all,
Zohar