Fedora 11 schedule proposal

[Karsten 'quaid' Wade]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 01:47:16PM -0800, Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
> 
> Unlike RHEL engineering, these ISVs do not get to pick when Fedora is
> branched for RHEL 6. 

I had a short sidebar where I revealed a bit more of my thinking, and
I thought it would help if I shared it back here.

## BEGIN

  My thinking is fairly simple.  FWIW, I'm still contemplating, having
  come to the thread a day late; I don't have a full opinion, but was
  just speaking to a partner viewpoint that matters to Fedora (v. RHEL
  partners.)

  Six months is a proven clock to run against.  However, we "always
  slip a few weeks" and we also have discovered some of the reasons
  why in our scheduling.  I _know_ from this round of scheduling about
  10 more reasons why Docs misses certain L10n deadlines, and we are
  going to have those improved for F11.

  It is a reasonable expectation that we can set a six month schedule
  and actually keep it.  I know there is no proof here, but it really
  isn't viable to continue with the expectation that we always slip.
  That is even more of a fallacy than making an occasional bump like
  this.

  The ISVs wouldn't really care about a longer window, but they are
  going to feel a shorter window.  I can beat the six month drum much
  better than the May Day/Halloween drum, in terms of explaining to
  them why we follow that proven clock.

  OK, let me see if I can distill some concrete from that:

  * Our original premise is "six months is the right rhythm", then we
    attached that to a fixed calendar for various conveniences.  There
    is more value in the original premise than in the conveniences
    that followed from it.  In this case, the goal is to _not_ change
    what is concretely working.

  * We better enable new contributors who have not already begun on
    F11; that is, the people who are stuck in the here-and-now and
    haven't begun to plan roadmaps and activate them in to rawhide.

  Anyway, still thinking ...

## END

In follow-up, it's clear we pick our calendar-tie for good and not
arbitrary reasons, but I maintain that it is the six-month rythym that
is primary, with "sync to upstreams and downstreams" as secondary.  I
also don't see how the change in schedule this time negatively affects
the reasons we picked May/Oct.  In other words, it's not like we are
going to miss the GNOME and KDE releases. :)

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener
http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
AD0E0C41
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