On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 10:45 AM, Cody Scott <cody.j.b.sc...@gmail.com>wrote:

> I know that I can look at the 1.7 release notes to see what is to come in
> the next release.
>
> How do django developers decide what features to work on?
>
> Is there a minimum time between releases?
>
> Is there a minimum quota for fixed bugs for a release?
>
> Is there ever a poll to see which features the community wants?
>
> Is there another way that developers get what the community wants?
>

Hi Cody,

Django development -- like most open source development -- doesn't happen
in the same way as commercial development. We don't sit down, decide
features that we want, develop a plan, track progress against that plan,
and deliver those features.

We're an entirely volunteer driven organisation, and the thing about
volunteers is that you don't have any carrots or sticks to drive the
development process. I can't compel anyone to work on anything -- and if I
punish people for not meeting my expectations, I'll probably find that my
volunteers go away pretty quickly.

Open source development means you have to recalibrate your thinking around
how software gets developed.

There isn't a minimum time between releases. We put out releases when we
need to. We've historically put out point releases on a roughly annual
timeframe, because that's matched our rate of development (and takes into
account how much ; however, the 1.6 release is on track to be a 7 month
development process.

There isn't a minimum quota of bugs. The bugs that get fixed are the bugs
that people provide patches for, and the core team can find sufficient time
to review and commit.

There isn't any sort of formal process for deciding what will be added. The
features that are added are the features that volunteers feel sufficiently
motivated to drive through the development process. Sometimes this means
that features stay on the todo list for a long time, and sometimes it means
that a feature goes from concept to completion in a matter of weeks.

In essence, the community is getting *exactly* what it wants… in the sense
that anyone who wants something bad enough is able to put in the time to
develop a feature, and will drive it to completion.

So - to answer the specific question -- Django 1.6 is about to be released
(we just pushed our release candidate, which means the final is a matter of
a week or so away). Django 1.7 is currently in feature development. The
only features we can guarantee will be in Django 1.7 are those that we've
already committed (most notably, migrations, and a couple of others that
are listed in the release notes). I can take a guess at a couple of others
that are *likely*, based purely upon the work that I myself am doing, and
what I've heard other core team members talking about. However, until any
of that code is committed, it's all speculative.

Yours,
Russ Magee %-)

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