On 19/06/2011 Andrea Pescetti wrote: > Would it be possible to release OOo 3.4 on the old (Oracle-owned) > infrastructure, and maybe take advantage of this release to educate > users and volunteers about the coming new infrastructure at Apache? > ... I take for granted that the community would support this proposal > (for one, the Italian community spent weeks to get the OOo 3.4 strings > 100% translated into Italian, and our QA team is ready to start full > testing any moment). Would developers and release managers support this > too?
All reactions on this old mail I sent have been positive, but we still miss an answer from developers. In my opinion this is an occasion not to miss for at least the following three reasons, comments welcome. 1) Releasing OpenOffice.org 3.4 must not be seen as the last activity on the old infrastructure, but as the first activity of the new Apache project. Dozens of tools are used to coordinate an OOo release, and for us experienced OOo volunteers it will surely be better to explain and revise tools and processes in front of a concrete example rather than describing them in abstract to new members. 2) OpenOffice.org 3.4 is mostly ready. I built the latest code from hg a couple weeks ago and I've regularly used it so far. The quality is good and there is no risk of damaging the OOo reputation. All release stoppers are bugs that will have to be fixed anyway, and fixing them later will require the same amount of time. 3) The amazing people who joined this project cover all areas needed for a successful release. This is the only group that can coordinate a successful release (bugfixing, QA, distribution) of OpenOffice.org 3.4, and use the experience to educate old and new community members to the Apache way and, on the other side, to the OOo processes. We have a huge community that is ready now and that becomes very active only when a release is in sight (and that would surely be committed to extra effort, if needed, this time): it would be a risky move, both for communication and for involvement of volunteers, to have them waiting for a long time before we can ask them to help us release a new version. Any reasons not to try? Regards, Andrea.
