[maemo-developers] About release dates (was RE: maemo Bug Jar #7)

[From: Frederic Crozat]

On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 11:16 PM,  <quim.gil at nokia.com> wrote:
> Hi,

Hi,

I'm going to play the devil advocate *on purpose*, even if I know
perfectly what constraints exist
to release free software, both as a member of GNOME release team and a
Mandriva employee working on Mandriva Linux distribution for about 8
years.

>> Am Donnerstag, 5. Juni 2008 schrieb josh.soref at nokia.com:
>>> Frederic Crozat wrote:
>>> > Remember that most people are not used to Nokia policy to embargo
>>> > any date (even estimate) regarding software (or hardware) release.
>
> True. These people need to understand that Nokia is a company watched by
> competitors, the media, shareholders... Device launches and software
> releases have an impact in this context far beyond the software update
> itself. This is why Nokia generally doesn't disclose release dates.

(I'm only commenting regarding Diablo release, not hardware release)

Well, if you don't couple strongly (or if you don't advertise it)
software and hardware (like you seem to imply for Diablo which could
be released at the same time as n810 WiMax is released), I don't see
any problem.

Nokia Internet Tablet have created their own niche market and don't
have any competitor yet (since they are not designed, on purpose, as
PDA nor smartphone), so this argument is bogus.

I really don't think shareholders have any interest in software
release date. Their interest is good financial result from Nokia, that
is it.

For media, unless things have changed recently, Nokia is not Apple and
IT are (again) a niche market, so media interest is quite low on it.

>>> For simplicity's sake, I don't know when Diablo will be released.
>>
>> Quality first! Releasing shouldn't _only_ be a management
>> decision. When the quality is as expected then the (scrum ?)
>> team should hand over the responsibility to the management.
>> They can then powerpoint the great event ;-)
>
> And this is what the maemo development team does.
>
> To understand better what Josh is saying you need to know that there is
> a gap of time between the moment the development team says 'this release
> is ready' and the moment the image goes actually out. The public release
> date is decided from a business and marketing perspective based on many
> factors that go beyond the quality of the software.

Translation : images are ready (and have probably been ready for some
time) and are held back for "media coverage" purpose. I don't by the
"business" perspective for a "software" release, since the earlier you
release a software update, the more chance to continue selling
hardware (or to prevent hardware sales to decline) you get.

> Also, who said our release dates are so fixed? Remember how upset some
> people were last year when I dared to give rough time estimations for
> the Hacker Edition and the OS2008 releases, and at the end they came
> later? Guess what was the role of quality in that.

Well, you just said in your linuxtag talk that "releases were always
delivered on time", so it means they are fixed (or if they were
decided like "ok, we are releasing tomorrow", then you really need to
change the way you deliver a message in a talk :p )

-- 
Frederic Crozat