Fwd: F13 Schedule Proposal--please RESPOND

[John Poelstra]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: F13 Schedule Proposal--please RESPOND
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:28:42 -0700
From: John Poelstra <poelstra(a)redhat.com&gt;
To: rel-eng(a)fedoraproject.org

I have had a Fedora 13 schedule drafted for several weeks based on the
methodology we've established from previous releases.
http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/schedules/f-13/f-13-key-tasks.html

I'm reluctant to publish this Fedora 13 draft because I think we can
come up with something better.  This thinking came out of a spreadsheet
I built to calculate the actual number of days between the significant
milestones in each of our schedules since Fedora 8 (see attached).  Some
of the comparisons between releases are surprising.  Others lead me to
believe we are making adjustments in the wrong places.

One of the biggest issues this analysis shows is that because we insist
on setting our next targeted release to Halloween or May Day we short
change the next release when we slip the release under development.  For
example, Fedora 12 slipped by two weeks + one additional week added for
conference attendance.  This takes three weeks away from Fedora 13 and
results in a 5.25 month release cycle.

Questions:
1) Are we truly getting value out of the "Halloween/May Day" principle?
2) Desktop has said they could use more time to do polish, etc. How much
longer would they propose?  My question on fedora-desktop-list went
unanswered.
3) With the advent of the test days and ISOs for those events, are we
getting any value out of the weekly snapshots during Alpha?  Should we
keep doing them?

My proposal:
1) Move to a solid 6 month release cycle--add 6 months to GA date of
previous release with the exception that adjustments will be made
when/if this collides with December holidays.  I realize this could mess
up synchronization with the Gnome schedule.
2) Eliminate weekly snapshots during Alpha since their value is questionable
3) Set the alpha and beta public testing durations to three weeks each.
4) Add new milestones for Desktop freezes, polish, and "work all done."

Please get back to me by Wednesday, November 4, 2009.

Thanks,
John