development cycle (Was: Re: What's New in Fedora Core 5 Test2 (LWN): Some comments)

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Am Montag, den 30.01.2006, 15:31 +0530 schrieb Rahul Sundaram:
> Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> >Am Montag, den 30.01.2006, 05:23 +0530 schrieb Rahul Sundaram:
> >>[...]
> >>A few comments for more information. The switch to a prolonged 
> >>development cycle for Fedora Core 5 was specific to this release 
> >While we are at the topic already: This fact was badly communicated.
> >There seems to be a whole lot of confusion about the current Fedora
> >release cycle in the community -- for example the german
> >wikipedia-writers have a long discussion about it and nowhere can find a
> >*official* statement [*1] that the nine month cycle for FC5 was only a
> >exception:
> >http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion:Fedora_Core#6_Monate
> >  
> >
> There was no official statement that the release cycle was permanently 
> extended either. 

Exactly. 

> People just assumed that.

Yeah -- but that our fault and not their.

>  Developers have been 
> communicating that this release cycle was only for FC5 for quite a while 
> now.

Yeah, and it seems that was not enough.

> >It IMHO would be good if we would have a defined long term release cycle
> >just as Gnome has. And IMHO it should be in sync with gnome somehow
> >(just as Ubuntu has, too)[*2]. E.g. The plan for Fedora Core could be:
> >Always release two weeks after a major gnome release (this would be end
> >of March and end of September). Yeah, sometimes it could slip a week or
> >two if that is needed, but the plan for the version after that one
> >should not slip due to this.
> >
> Fedora is not solely focussed on the desktop.

Sure. But a defined long term release cycle has a lot of benefits --
look at Gnome.

>  Tying it up on the GNOME 
> release schedule only makes sense if you are a solely concentrating on 
> the desktop.

No -- but if we sync up to the same schedule maybe gcc will sync to it,
too. Or xorg, kde. Or maybe even the kernel (okay, that's unlikely). 

>  Fedora Core is more of a general purpose operating system 
> now. Any proposed change for that needs the buy-in from many of the core 
> developers. That really isnt a discussion for marketing.

Sure. But the reason why I replied to your initial mail in this thread
was that there was a lack of a defined statement about the Fedora
release cycle. And that's more a marketing problem afaics.

CU
thl  
-- 
Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info>