TAG | A conversation with Martin Michlmayr |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Thursday, 31 January 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 6 Now with the appointment of a full time security team for the testing distribution, do you really need this kind of release schedule? I mean, people can just use testing, can't they? That's a good question. There are some people who think that the whole release model is out of date, and you just use something which is continuously updated, and I think that's true for a large number of people. It's a good solution for such people. But there are others who just don't want to touch their systems at all. I think having a stable release is still the best solution for them. All this pressure for time-based releases - is it because of companies tightening the screw? I think it's just a better way to co-ordinate the release of a project. I think in a project where you have hundreds or thousands of volunteers, the old model simply doesn't work. You can't say to people, "we'll make a release when we have that specific set of features". Because with volunteers, you don't know when that's going to be. That means you can't plan, you can't schedule anything. Whereas with time-based releases it's a very good way to co-ordinate a large project to let people know when they have to get their changes in, if they want to make a release. I don't think it's so much commercial pressures as changes in the last few years. We've seen that the speed of development has become so much faster. I mean, there is just so much development going on that if you don't put out a release pretty fast, things get out of date pretty quickly. I think that's the main reason. There appears to be a big split developing between those in the community who stick to the old "it's ready when it's ready" and the new bunch who want to release things every 6 months or so. I don't think it's that big a split because the old "release when it's ready" never worked, because it's never ready - you could always improve something. Software is never going to be perfect. I think having time-based releases is good because you need some kind of cut-off date and a deadline - that's what a time-based release gives you. But that doesn't mean that quality has to be low, because if your development process works well, then the quality should be high all the time, no matter when you make a release. |
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