Re: Two weeks to feature freeze

On Sat, 2003-06-21 at 22:55, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> >
> > Maybe a better strategy would be to get a release out soon but not wait 6
> > months for another release which would contain the Win32 port and the PITR
> > stuff (assuming those aren't done in time for this release).
>
> What concerns me is that we thought that after 7.3, and didn't do much
> work on either until we got near 7.4 release. I wonder if this is just
> going to be a pattern, where these items are so large, we can't get any
> motivation to focus on them until we get near the final release. I
> guess if each final release gets us a little closer, eventually we will
> get there, but this process is not ideal.
>
> The big puzzle is how do you get people (including myself) motivated to
> work on a feature that takes a _huge_ amount of work to see any payoff?
> I would like to know. Anyone?
>

Here's a sure to be wildly unpopular suggestion:

Make the deciding factor for the next release support of "foo" (foo can
be win32, pitr, replication, 2PC, whatever...). This would put ample
pressure on the developers of "foo" to get it done since the whole
release rides on their shoulders. It also might encourage others to help
out more since they can't get something new until "foo" is completed.
This would also prioritize said developers time on the large project
rather than other non-prioritized tasks, and it also helps to ensure a
"killer feature" for those who want such things,

Robert Treat
--
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