Re: Assisting developers

Josh Berkus wrote:
> Chris,  all:
> 
> > Well, I note (and I'm not being unkind or anything here) that a lot of
> > the high level committers we have haven't been so active this release.
> > Peter and Joe haven't been around much and Jan has been busy with Slony.
> >   We also lost Thomas Lockhart.  Neil's also away on holidays.  You and
> > Tom have basically been doing all the reviewing - a great job - but I
> > can't believe Tom hasn't cracked yet :P
> 
> Actually, this is a *big* part of the problem.   In 7.3, by unplanned 
> circumstance, we got into a cycle of doing feature freeze and starting beta 
> during the summer.   This is a bad cycle -- the Europeans take their 3-week 
> vacations, the Americans go to (and spend many hours preparing for) a bunch 
> of conventions, Students go to internships, people take long weekends, get 
> married, etc.   ( This is probably why many American corporations end their 
> fiscal year in midsummer; nothing is going to get done anyway, might as well 
> clean up. )
> 
> The result is that we chronically have less manpower when just when we need 
> everybody.   And some of us end up spending 11 hours a day in front of the 
> screen when we should be outside soaking up Vitamin D.
> 
> Therefore, I propose that the next version either feature freeze in March or 
> in October, but NOT in May-August.  Which we do -- March or October -- can be 
> based on an evaluation of the outstanding post-7.5 patches in January.   

True, but northern-hemisphere summer is only 6 weeks old, and we have
had these issues for many months --- it isn't a new problem.   Alvaro
didn't get the feedback he needed in March either.  :-(

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