[Bf-committers] Blender Release Cycle

[Doug Ollivier]

> Another example of a release failure is KDE 4. They released and
> called it stable and thus it was being using in distros. Problem was
> that it was far from finished and very buggy. This lead to the massive
> flood of users going to other desktops. To this day KDEs reputation is
> not as good as it was. There needs to be a clear communications
> between devs and users about what is alpha, beta and final releases.
> Stable releases are expected to be full featured, stable and usable
> products, dev releases are not.
Just to chime in here with an idea that is not related to coding.

Is it worth having the 3 monthly/12weekly release cycle, but of these, 
having a Documentation release once a year,  where one of the releases 
for a year is given the status of the supported, stable and more 
thoroughly tested release that is designed to have written documentation 
for it?

I'd suggest a documentation release should be timed to proceed the 
school year by about 3 months, which would give educators a chance to 
update their documentation on a set schedule.  It would give some 
consistency to materials from around the world, and would give authors 
and educators a set schedule to work around.

Does that address the issues of rapid feature development, while 
satisfying the needs of those who value stability and consistency over 
shiny new things?

Doug Ollivier