plan for beta1 & open issues

The PostgreSQL 9.6 release management team has determined that
PostgreSQL 9.6beta1 should wrap on May 9, 2016 for release on May
12,2016, subject to the availability of the packaging team to perform
a release at that time. The release management team believes that
there are no currently-known problems which are both severe enough to
justify postponing beta and complex enough that they cannot be
resolved in advance of that date. The release management team will
reconsider these dates if new and serious issues are reported which
make it seem imprudent to ship a beta during that week. This is the
same week during which minor releases for existing back-branches are
scheduled to go out, so this would mean doing 9.6beta1 at the same
time we do back-branches.

The release management team encourages all community members to add
any known issues which should be addressed before the final release of
PostgreSQL 9.6 to
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PostgreSQL_9.6_Open_Items - community
members who lack edit access should follow the directions at
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/WikiEditing in order to obtain it.
The RMT will determine which of these open items, if any, are beta
blockers; which are issues that need to be addressed before final
release; and which do not need to be addressed for PostgreSQL 9.6. The
RMT does not encourage adding missing features or bugs in
already-released versions to this list; but if there is even a
possibility that an issue might be new in PostgreSQL 9.6, the RMT
encourages community members to be bold in adding that issue to the
list so that it may be properly tracked and considered by the RMT.

Robert Haas
PostgreSQL 9.6 Release Management Team