15.0-RELEASE schedule

Hi FreeBSD users,

I've just posted the schedule for FreeBSD 15.0 to the FreeBSD website.  As
a .0 release, this release cycle will be lengthier than normal, spreading
over the last half of 2025.

15.0-RELEASE schedule:

  reminder email:          July 11, 2025
  main slush:              August 8, 2025
  stable/15 branch:        September 5, 2025
  ALPHA builds start:      September 5, 2025
  ports quarterly branch:  October 1, 2025
  releng/15.0 branch:      October 3, 2025
  BETA builds start:       October 3, 2025
  doc/ tree slush:         October 3, 2025
  doc/ tree tag:           October 17, 2025
  ports package builds:    TBD (Between October 17 and 30[*])
  RC builds start:         October 31, 2025
  RELEASE build starts:    November 28 or sooner, 2025
  RELEASE announcement:    December 2 or sooner, 2025
  15.0-RELEASE EoL:        September 30, 2026
  Branch EoL:              December 31, 2029
[*] Or later depending on schedule slippage.

I haven't listed all of the builds but they'll be a week apart per normal
practice.

In short:
* Instead of 2 weeks of "reminder" I'm scheduling 4 weeks.
* Instead of 2 weeks of "slush" I'm scheduling 4 weeks.
* The stable branch happens on the first Friday of September.
* There will be 4 ALPHAs built from stable/15 before the releng branch.
* Instead of 3 BETAs I'm scheduling 4 BETAs.
* Instead of 1 RC I'm allowing time for 4 RCs (although less would be nice).

I think this allows enough time for problems to arise and be fixed without
the schedule slipping; in particular allowing 4 weeks for RCs essentially
means we have 3 weeks of schedule slippage built in, while a predicted
release date of December 2nd means that in the worst case we can have 4
more weeks of delays before we run past the end of the quarter.

-- 
Colin Percival
FreeBSD Release Engineering Lead & EC2 platform maintainer
Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid