[development] RFC: drupal as a moving target

[Ivan Sergio Borgonovo]

There are things that should be considered obsolete on the drupal
handbook as the OOP policy and the security policy... and a "myth"
that the community seems to be proud of: Drupal is a moving target
and we aren't scared to break the API.

Drupal is now a mature project and people start to rely on it for
projects that have a longer life span than the release process of
Drupal.

Still there are parts of Drupal that aren't still mature enough to
provide a "stable" API and freezing them there would hurt the project.

I did a rough estimate (sed -e '/5\.[xX]/' | wc) on
http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/
this doesn't take into account multiple versions, features that moved
to core, etc...
But the result is indicative:
D5: 372
D6: 76

I did read:
http://drupal.org/handbook/version-info
and
http://drupal.org/node/65922

In the face of the current status of Drupal project and on the above
data isn't it the time to adjust the above policy a bit?

I think that many core dev grew up with Drupal and now have to babysit
projects based on Drupal that have a longer lifespan than a Drupal
release cycle, so it shouldn't be a problem to actually reflect this
in a public policy that will help others to make their plans too.

Weren't we saying that Drupal value resides in being a framework
rather than a finished product? What is the value of a moving
framework for devs?

What about the development process and focusing on improving the
aspects that will contribute in offering a mature *stable* API... or
does this sound as a blasphemy?

I saw that the later document got an important revision (August
2007) when life-cycle moved from 6-12 months to 12-24.

-- 
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
http://www.webthatworks.it