To: "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com>
Cc: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>, Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com>,
	PostgreSQL Development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Release cycle length
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0311180215410.639-100000@peter.localdomain>
	<3FB97CBC.8030900@commandprompt.com>
From: Doug McNaught <doug@mcnaught.org>
Date: 17 Nov 2003 21:26:09 -0500
In-Reply-To: "Joshua D. Drake"'s message of "Mon, 17 Nov 2003 17:58:20 -0800"
Message-ID: <87u152quny.fsf@asmodeus.mcnaught.org>
Lines: 26

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

> Hello,
> 
>    Personally I am for long release cycles, at least for major releases. 
> In fact
> as of 7.4 I think there should possibly be a slow down in releases with more
> incremental releases (minor releases) throughout the year.

That would pretty much mean changing the "minor releases only for
serious bugfixes" philosphy.  Is that what you are advocating?

>    People are running their companies and lives off of PostgreSQL,
> they should be able to rely on a specific feature set, and support
> from the community for longer.

If 7.3.4 works for you, there's nothing to stop you running it until
the end of time...  If you can't patch in bugfixes yourself, you
should be willing to pay for support.  Commercial companies like Red
Hat don't support their releases indefinitely for free; why should the
PG community be obligated to?

Also, we very rarely remove features--AUTOCOMMIT on the server is
about the only one I can think of.

-Doug