Fwd: [Epo-ec-advisors] Some thoughts on areas to address in the EC

[jesse]

> EPO::Core::$YYYY::Q[1-4] we will support 4 previous releases say 4
> quarters or 4 previous releases with bug fixes and updates to modules
> that exist in those releases. Additions and Deprecations can only
> happen for *new* releases, but module updates and build will happen
> for the last 4 releases unless someone pays to have a specific release
> supported longer than that.


What I think you've said above is that there will be a quarterly
deprecation / new feature point and that there will be a one year
maintenance promise for old releases....and that you're promising to
keep four possibly fairly different releases maintained at any time.

For something that's supposed to be stable and enterprisey, quarterly
feature churn is going to scare people.  There are plenty of places that
it takes 60-90 days to get things deployed.  Once deployed, production
systems kick around for many years.  Saying that you'll kill support
after 12 months seems draconian and unfriendly.

Saying that the previous year's stable version only gets security
and critical bugfix updates after 12 months sounds a lot more like
what a company depending on infrastructure would expect.


...and then there's getting developers trained on the new version of things.

That said, there's no reason there can't be monthly, weekly or even
daily _releases_ of a given release series and there's no reason that
an unstable ::2010 can't be available as soon as ::2009 ships.