Yup, it's no typo.
Just to get a feel for what 3-month release cycles would feel like, I thought I'd throw this out now already.
- Feature freeze for 6.0 would be 1 January 2004.
- Release date for 6.0 would be 1 February 2004.
That gives us about two months from 5.0 is released until feature freeze for 6.0.
That also means that late december is the time to make sure we've purged the bug-tracker for submitted patches.
And that gives us the opportunity to start thinking about what's realistic to get into 6.0 already today.
I expect us to be contributing some workflow enhancements, and I sincerely hope we can find either time or funding to do some serious bug-tracker improvements. Also, I hope to be able to contribute to the CMS efforts going on. Plus more general UI work, hopefully this time moving a step deeper into the packages themselves.
Does the idea of targeting these dates sound fun?
To me, the prospect of 3-month release cycles is very encouraging, because it means we'll get in the habit of releasing, which means cleaning out bugs and stabilizing the code base, and it gives the users of OpenACS something to work with, when they decide which version to use, it gives them the incentive to stay close to the releases, and it tells them exactly when they need to have their bugs filed and patches submitted if they want them to go into the next release.
Thoughts?
/Lars