[Axis2] Release Strategy

[robert burrell donkin]

I'd glad that the team decided to release the last cut as 0.9.2 rather than 1.0 Alpha and I'd like to explain my reasons in a little more depth (now that the release is cut). I think everyone appreciates the efforts that have been put into get this far.

IMHO Axis2 0.9.2 is a more appropriate description of where the Axis2 project is at the moment than 1.0 Alpha. What's there is reasonably solid but (as a whole) is feature incomplete. 0.x releases have a long and proud history. For example, openssl is only on 0.9.8.

Alpha's (on the other hand) are transitory. It is not unreasonable to expect that an Alpha will be replaced with a Beta similar (in functionality to the Alpha) but with bugs fixed and more proven stability. Working out the order of Alpha's and Beta releases is also less obvious (for example, it is no uncommon to see Alpha1, Beta1, Beta2, Alpha2, Beta3, RC1 as bugs are uncovered in the system). This makes tracking feature additions to Alpha's and Beta's a PITA. Much better to use 0.x versions when it is know that there is functionality that will be added.

So, I recommend continuing to cut regular releases in the 0.9.x series until Axis2 is feature complete (for the 1.0 release). IMHO this is likely to create more momentum than a series of Alpha's especially if the releases are frequent.

This seems like a good time to offer up some information about a way of doing release management which has been adopted by many of the large and popular projects here at Apache including HTTPD, Structs and Tomcat. The basic idea is that it is the same code which progresses from RC to Alpha to Beta to Full release as it is tested and verified. If at any stage issues are found which prevent it progressing, the process starts from scratch. This gives a longer release cycle but ensures a higher quality final release. It also creates momentum.

Another HTTPD innovation (which I really like) I heard about at ApacheConEU was movement towards all approving committers signing the release (indeed: signing the release is the accepted form of +1). This not only improves security (attackers need to compromise every key it's signed with) but IMHO leads to a real sense that it's a team release.

Robert