Hi Scott, On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 03:40:10PM +0100, Scott McKeown | redIT wrote: > Anyhow, as you have mentioned that its really the community that is > helping drive the developement forward, how about some form of online > vote system to help find out what the community would most like to have > added to the next release and this could then be the main target of the > next stable release.
It already exists, it's the mailing list! Development is not based on a vote but on *real* efforts, and the best way to have a feature implemented is to contribute it. When you cannot contribute it, you at least need to explain your needs on the list so that they can be discussed and tailored to something implementable. In fact, this has worked for years so I firmly believe this will continue to work. Also, as I mentionned, I don't want a release to depend on an advertise feature set anymore, so that's one more reason for having things done in parallel and as contributions. > For example Open a vote for one month before all major development > begins with say four items that are realisticly possible for adding into > v1.6 after the month the one with the most becomes the main development > focus for this release. We really never know. Server-side keep-alive was realistic for 6-months after 1.4, and digging into it constantly proved more difficult with a very long trail of dependencies. So I don't want to bet anymore on ETAs for certain features. We have many examples like this, of things we have been forced to drop or at least delay so that we could perform deeper changes that were needed. > I'm not saying that other things can't and > shouldn't be added that would just be silly but this way us out here get > what we think we really need and we continue to have a reliable and > stable development process. There's another point I forgot to mention : despite a number of companies contributing to the project, most initiatives are done on a voluntary basis by enthousiasts on their spare time. Most of them have no idea how long it can take to implement something nor how much spare time they have to work on it. We *cannot* and *must not* wait for people's work to be completed before a release, and they must not feel bad for missing a deadline. That's the benefit of a merge window : if your code is not in good enough shape for version N, no rush, continue at your rhythm, you'll push it for N+1 a few months later. This process ensures that what people want actually is what will eventually get merged. Large companies can hire developers to get their features done quickly, and other users can take their time, nobody is waiting for them to finish. Best regards, Willy
