Re: Assisting developers

Josh Berkus wrote:
> Chris, all:
>
> > Well, I note (and I'm not being unkind or anything here) that a lot of
> > the high level committers we have haven't been so active this release.
> > Peter and Joe haven't been around much and Jan has been busy with Slony.
> > We also lost Thomas Lockhart. Neil's also away on holidays. You and
> > Tom have basically been doing all the reviewing - a great job - but I
> > can't believe Tom hasn't cracked yet :P
>
> Actually, this is a *big* part of the problem. In 7.3, by unplanned
> circumstance, we got into a cycle of doing feature freeze and starting beta
> during the summer. This is a bad cycle -- the Europeans take their 3-week
> vacations, the Americans go to (and spend many hours preparing for) a bunch
> of conventions, Students go to internships, people take long weekends, get
> married, etc. ( This is probably why many American corporations end their
> fiscal year in midsummer; nothing is going to get done anyway, might as well
> clean up. )
>
> The result is that we chronically have less manpower when just when we need
> everybody. And some of us end up spending 11 hours a day in front of the
> screen when we should be outside soaking up Vitamin D.
>
> Therefore, I propose that the next version either feature freeze in March or
> in October, but NOT in May-August. Which we do -- March or October -- can be
> based on an evaluation of the outstanding post-7.5 patches in January.

True, but northern-hemisphere summer is only 6 weeks old, and we have
had these issues for many months --- it isn't a new problem. Alvaro
didn't get the feedback he needed in March either. :-(

--
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