Will we get a RELEASE-9.1 for Christmas?

[Ronald Klop]

On Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:06:24 +0100, Kevin Oberman <kob6558 at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 3:52 PM, Brett Glass <brett at lariat.net> wrote:
>> At 04:29 PM 12/10/2012, Adrian Chadd wrote:
>>
>>> There's politics in every organisation. There are ego clashes in every
>>> organisation. Sometimes you'll fit in, sometimes you won't. If you
>>> feel there are issues, find people inside the community who you do get
>>> along well with and talk with them about it.
>>>
>>> It sucks, yes. I'm one of those "shut up and code already" types and I
>>> deal badly with politics.
>>
>>
>> Me, too. That's why I have been contributing code quietly through others
>> rather than putting myself out in the front lines.
>>
>> In any event -- back to the original topic -- there should indeed be  
>> better
>> communications between the Release Engineering team and the community.
>> The time it takes to post updates -- especially as it gets close to  
>> release
>> time -- would be recovered many times over because folks like me  
>> wouldn't
>> have any need to e-mail regarding status and projected schedules. ;-)
>
> I whole-heatedly agree... but I know a little about release
> engineering for a large project, especially when the release team is
> unpaid and has to honor commitments to $real_job. Release engineering
> is very detail-oriented and unforgiving.  This is not really
> compatible with part-time work.
>
> The RE must be focused, first ans foremost, on getting a release out
> the door as quickly as possible and not to have any serious problems
> with that release. This makes it very had to pull bakc and make
> announcements or even update posted schedules. That is made even worse
> by hte desire to make such communication accurate or at least useful.
> Since there is a LOT of guessing involved in pulling together a
> release (how long will "Joe" take to fix this problem or why are there
> half a dozen reports of a serious issue with the RC, when no one else
> can reproduce it or even figure out what part of the system is causing
> it), RE folks are usually reticent about trying to give out any
> information since it will most likely be inaccurate.
>
> This is why I accept the line that it will be released when it is
> ready. I really think it's about ready, but not even the head of the
> 9.1 RE team KNOWS when it will be ready, even if the  ISO builds are
> started. "There is many a slip twixt the cup and the lip."

Then they can communicate they don't know a date. People accept hearing:  
'because of unforeseen problems the expected date is unknown' in stead of  
'2012-10-29' (http://wiki.freebsd.org/Releng/9.1TODO).

Not knowing something is not an excuse for not communicating.

Ronald.