Remember that a lot of open-source projects are not in pre-alpha anymore. Also, they may be very small projects with few developers, or very large projects with many developers. Often as well, many which adopt such a cycle do not have to worry about compatibility with closed-source products.

A disadvantage to the users is also present in the same link you provided: "Disadvantages to this release model include the possibility of more frequent crashes or even data loss, and that end users must update their software more often."

On Mon, 11 Oct 2010 20:14:26 +1100, Ged Murphy <gedmurphy@gmail.com> wrote:

A stable trunk should be an ongoing battle, not something reserved for release time.

There shouldn’t be more than a weeks worth of release work required (the release itself is no more than a few hours work).

Anything which jeopardises this should be done in a branch.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_early,_release_often

 

It’s a tried and proven method used in most large open source projects and reactos is no exception

 

Ged.

 

 

From: ros-dev-bounces@reactos.org [mailto:ros-dev-bounces@reactos.org] On Behalf Of Olaf Siejka
Sent: 11 October 2010 09:14
To: ReactOS Development List
Subject: Re: [ros-dev] ReactOS development cycle

 

I do agree with Wax in general, that any cycle will be ok provided that we can stick to it.

 

Three month cycle would be (more/less):

 

- 6 weeks of pure development (and first 4 weeks - release of the x-1 version);

- 6 weeks of stabilising trunk, bugfixing, plus some finishing work on features that will be included in this release;

 

Seems awfully short

 

Regards

 

2010/10/11 Ged Murphy <gedmurphy@gmail.com>

We tried it at the wrong time, trunk wasn’t ready for it.

If you go back over the previous discussions we had on the topic a few years ago, you’ll see that what was discussed makes good development sense.

 

Ged.