4.6 roadmap of sorts

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Biju Chacko wrote:
> Olivier Fourdan wrote:
>> Wouldn't it better to choose a time based release cycle, a date we all
>> agree so that we can then decide what can goes in and what cannot,
>> depending on each developers availability and agenda.
>>
>> If something cannot make it in tome for 4.6, no big deal, it will
>> hopefully make it in 4.8 but at least we shall have 4.6 out before
>> everybody forgets about Xfce. But since we all know and agree on the
>> date, we can arrange to make 4.6 stable even if this is not as feature
>> rich as it was initially planned,
> 
> This has worked well for gnome and the linux kernel.

... both of which have many more committed, reliable, full-time 
resources than Xfce does.  Or rather, they actually have committed, 
reliable, full-time resources, whereas Xfce does not.

I'm not opposed to a time-based release schedule on principle (clearly 
it *does* work for some projects, and quite well), but I question if 
we'll still be able to do quality releases and stick to the schedule.  I 
know I can't commit too far in advance to a particular release window, 
and if we're going to try to schedule the betas, RCs, and then the 
final, I can't be sure I'd be around to fix bugs discovered as fast as 
is necessary to hit the target dates.  I'd imagine that no one else 
would be able to commit to this either.

Though I guess a time-based release schedule that only specifies a 
feature freeze and maybe sets a loose release date estimate might work. 
  The main problem as I see it is that we just hack on whatever looks 
fun, and keep adding stuff on and off, and if we never have a release 
date in mind, we're never going to stop and concentrate on stabilising.

So... anybody want to hack up another wiki page with some milestone 
dates, or at least a place where we can fill them in?  Let's make it 
look formal enough so we'd feel guilty for not following it ^_~.

	-brian