[Libreoffice] Thoughts on releasing ...

Hi guys,

On Sun, 2010-12-05 at 20:49 +0300, Sophie Gautier wrote:
> On 05/12/2010 20:39, Andrea Pescetti wrote:
> > So a major change with respect to the OpenOffice.org release process
> > would be that no explicit approval is needed for localized versions.

        Right. I do not believe we can afford to hand out 60 vetos to
releasing; (or 110 if we go for all langs). Also, I don't think it is
that acceptable either to have an:

        "only some <N> 'important' languagess get a veto"

        process. And in general, I think rights to say 'no' are most often a
serious hinderance rather than a help in processes - I would not want to
be handing them out left & right myself.

        Instead - I would suggest we use a vigorously time-based release. What
does that mean ? it means we -know- we will release on a given date. We
have a fixed schedule, and absent any crash-on-start type issue, we
release on that date [1]. This gives fair notice to all Developers:
hackers, translators, QA guys, documentors etc. It also means we have to
get serious about code freezes, and translation work in good time;
and/or resign ourselves to a lower quality release.

        *But* - and I can hear you shouting this; what if we have some serious
problem !? what if my localisation is broken / missing ?

        I think here we need to get to the root of the point-zero release:
these releases are the first cut of new things - as such they are
exciting and new, but perhaps contain bugs. If you are highly
conservative - waiting for X.Y.0.1 is a good idea :-)

        I suggest that we then have a .1 release quite quickly after our
initial release (to let people catch up), and that we include only
no-brainer code fixes (for crashes etc.) and translation updates.
Perhaps we do the .0.1 release after only two weeks or so; and another
after a month. At which point, hopefully we are in a very good state
stability / feature wise, and people are looking forward to the next
release coming soon.

        How does that sound ? I really want to be releasing more frequently,
rather than less, I think we have the infrastructure to do that - though
clearly there is no requirement for users to upgrade between minor point
releases, and we don't need to make a huge noise about them. Big
Business and Government users (who supposedly hate updating) can simply
move from the end of the last stable release (ie. the .0.5) to the last
of the next stable release - or even miss several out if they want
something really old[2] :-) Incidentally, this model is essentially
similar to the Linux 'stable' model whereby people can maintain any
released branch for as long as they want and keep updating it with
security /translation fixes etc. if they so wish.

        How does that sound to people ?

        Thanks,

                Michael.

[1] - it is notable that our first release is not like this; no clear
schedule ahead of time & so on - apologies; the next can be better.
[2] - I hate it when these discussions of big business' apparent
requirements turn into a requirement that everyone else do nothing for
months, have horribly painful process, and/or not release quickly when
the solution is quite simple.
-- 
 michael.meeks@novell.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot