[maemo-developers] maemo Bug Jar #7

[From: Andre Klapper]

[an off-topic posting about fixed release dates.
please stop reading if not interested.]

Am Freitag, den 06.06.2008, 19:48 +0200 schrieb Krischan Keitsch:
> 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 ;-)
> Personally I consider fix release dates as contra productive. Quality it the 
> key to success.

Depends on the kind of project and your customers.

>From my point of view GNOME has also become successful because they were
one of the first projects that started publishing based on a predictable
schedule (a new major release every half a year). This worked out quite
well in the past (though the latest GNOME release, 2.22, was a pretty
risky one), and other open source projects have also started to publish
schedules (e.g. KDE 4 - no flamewars, please).
Customers (=distributions) can reliably plan which version to include
and start beta-testing the release candidates of the final GNOME
version they plan to include.
Fixed release dates can create some pressure to get things done,
especially in open source projects that aren't steered by *one* company
that pays you (and in worst case could fire you), because you have way
less tools to create pressure and motivate volunteers. :-)

-andre (GNOME Release Team member)

-- 
Andre Klapper (maemo.org bugmaster)