Lots has has happened since first laying out how things would go down for the Fedora 14 Alpha release. Tonight Jared announced that the Alpha would be slipping by a week as would the rest of the schedule. This means the alpha is scheduled for release on August 24, 2010, and the final release on November 2, 2010.
Obviously this impacts the feature I proposed for Fedora 14. Some people have commented to me privately that this is probably very disappointing. I’m not that disappointed. It was not a surprise considering all of the other great things that have been accomplished so far in the release cycle–changing to git, Python 2.7 rebuilds, boost rebuilds, systemd, etc.
I think we’ve learned yet again that we can only accomplish so much at the same time in a short amount of time. Maybe it is too simplistic to say that we traded these accomplishments for extending the release by a week, but I continue to believe (perhaps idealistically) that if there were less moving parts to manage at the same time, attention and resources could have been more focused on testing and fine tuning the release. Form your own conclusion by evaluating the data collected so far for Fedora 14 and adding your thoughts to the comments.
I look at what has happened as a difference of values between shipping on schedule and cramming as much new stuff in as possible. Neither is right or wrong, but it is really hard to hold them as equally important. I’d rather ship according to schedule and be known as a distribution that consistently does so. Others enjoy the process of living on the edge, pushing our infrastructure forward, and releasing the latest and greatest software.
Which is most important to you?
August 12, 2010 at 6:56 am
Many times new software (apps, kernel, xorg, etc) can be found in Fedora before any other distro. To hit a release milestone some of these features would likely be delayed until next release. Slipping a feature by ~6months is a pretty big deal. Fedora would no longer being able to pride itself on being the first. IMO, “begin first” isn’t important as a bragging right but it is as a development right. Getting the latest and greatest software into the hands of Fedora users and developers before any other distro means Fedora stays a first class development environment (and the most modern linux desktop). So if you had to ask me whether I preferred concrete release dates or new software I’d say new software everytime.