Do overlapping release dates matter for our mirrors?

[John Poelstra]

Infrastructure People,

In the interest of maintaining good will with our mirrors and 
appreciation for the great service they provide to Fedora... I'm looking 
for some guidance and preferences from the Infrastructure team on how to 
go forward.

During the schedule planning for Fedora 13, Jesse suggested looking at 
the other releases to see where our final date was landing.  Jesse dug 
up the dates and I add my own editorial comments (see below)

Thanks,
John

Here are the questions as it relates to the mirrors that carry Fedora 
and other distros:

1) What is the minimum distance in days that we have to put between our 
release and other distros?

2) Is it the release date that matters most or the date the staging starts?

3) On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = doesn't matter, 3 = moderate impact, 5 = 
critical, we'd be out of our minds not to) how important is it that we 
bend our schedule to not land as close as we might be potentially 
landing with the dates below (assuming we do not slip)?

I'm really looking for a scale to get a sense of the severity and not 
subjective responses like "it will be bad" or "people will hate us."  I 
want to know "how much."

4) Our current options as I understand them are:
    a) Overlap closely (see below)
    b) Add two weeks to Fedora 13

   Is there an "option C" that we could implement or go with so as not 
to have to add two weeks to our scheduled GA date if the consensus score 
from #3 is high?

------------------------------------------------------

Debian                2010-March (Freeze, not an actual release date)

Fedora 13             2010-04-27 (since Fedora 8 every release has been 
late >= 2 weeks)

Ubuntu 10.4           2010-04-29 (I'm told they have never slipped)

OpenSUSE              2010-05-05 (no idea on their "on time arrival 
history")