Hi Josep, Thanks for bringing up this discussion.
My impression was that "preview" was earlier than early access. In my mind, "preview" somewhat implies that the feature could be incomplete or partial. For example, if someone said their game was a "preview" I would expect kind of a demo. Early access (EA) means people can "access" it but it's "early". In other words, use at your own risk. What you are calling "production ready," I think we've sometimes called generally available (GA) in the past. I don't have a strong preference on terms. I think no matter how much standardization we do, there will always be a lot of discretion in these terms :) But maybe this helps clarify how they've been used in the past? best, Colin On Wed, Jul 31, 2024, at 02:03, Josep Prat wrote: > Hi Kafka devs, > > Lately we started using "early access", "production ready" and also > "preview" to determine the grade of "production readiness" of the features > we deliver to our community. > However, as far as I know, there is no official definition from the Apache > Kafka side on which are the graduation steps for features and what type of > "guarantees" each of these offer. > > I think we should agree on which terms we should use and what each of these > exactly mean in terms of reliability. So far it seems we have this > graduation steps: > - Early Access: Feature is just complete but not yet fully polished and > maybe not used in production in many environments > - Preview: Feature was early access before and it underwent at least a > cycle of improvements and fixes and it's used in some production > environments maybe > - Production ready: Feature is officially released and it fulfills the > expected initial needs > > Note that we don't offer any guarantees or SLA/SLO in the classical term. > > Is this something we can agree on? What do those terms mean to you? Do we > need more steps? Or do we need less steps? > > Best, > -- > [image: Aiven] <https://www.aiven.io> > > *Josep Prat* > Open Source Engineering Director, *Aiven* > [email protected] | +491715557497 > aiven.io <https://www.aiven.io> | <https://www.facebook.com/aivencloud> > <https://www.linkedin.com/company/aiven/> <https://twitter.com/aiven_io> > *Aiven Deutschland GmbH* > Alexanderufer 3-7, 10117 Berlin > Geschäftsführer: Oskari Saarenmaa, Hannu Valtonen, > Anna Richardson, Kenneth Chen > Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, HRB 209739 B
