Re: Lets (not) break all the things. Was: [pgsql-advocacy] 9.6 -> 10.0

On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 1:07 PM, Oleg Bartunov <obartunov(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

>
>
>> * we don't *know* that any of the above items will require a backwards
>> compatibility break.
>>
>> People keep talking about "we might want to break compatibility/file
>> format one day". But nobody is working on anything which will and
>> justifies it.
>>
>
> Our roadmap http://www.postgresql.org/developer/roadmap/ is the problem.
> We don't have clear roadmap and that's why we cannot plan future feature
> full release. There are several postgres-centric companies, which have most
> of developers, who do all major contributions. All these companies has
> their roadmaps, but not the community. I think 9.6 release is inflection
> point, where we should combine our roadmaps and release the one for the
> community. Than we could plan releases and our customers will see what to
> expect. I can't say for other companies, but we have big demand for many
> features from russian customers and we have to compete with other
> databases. Having community roadmap will helps us to work with customers
> and plan our resources.
>

​I've already posited just having our release numbers operate on 5-year
increments 10.0 - 10.4; 11.0 - 11.4, etc on advocacy but was met with
silence. In any case this comment is just furtherance of the tail wagging
the dog. I see no fundamental reason to have to plan something momentous
enough, and actively schedule work to meet the plan, in order to justify a
10.0 release.

There is a bunch of hand-waving here, and its an environment I'm not
immersed in, but it seems that creating a roadmap today is tantamount to
waterfall design - useful in moderation but has largely shown to be
undesirable at scale. Aside from the 1-year release cycle the project is
reasonably agile and well receptive to outside observation, questions, and
contributions. If you have spare resources you need to keep busy just ask
how you can help. To be honest the community would likely rather have
those people help review and test everything that is presently in-progress
- future goals on a roadmap are not nearly as important. And if you have a
demand you think needs to be fulfill put the information out there and get
input.

If you are claiming the balance between community and profit is skewed
undesirably you will need to put forth a more concrete argument in order to
convince me. For me, having plans reside in the profit-motive parts of the
community and having core simply operate openly seems to strike a solid
balance.

I give a solid +10 to Robert's opinions on the matter and aside from
figuring out if and how to fit first-number versioning dynamics into our
release policies I think the community is doing a sufficient job on the
communication and planning front. The biggest resource need is quality
control. I dislike the fact that we are currently in a situation where the
first 3 point releases each year are considered "live betas" based
especially on both 9.3 and 9.5 post-release significant bug counts.

David J.