Re: Last gasp

On 10 April 2012 15:26, Kevin Grittner <Kevin(dot)Grittner(at)wicourts(dot)gov> wrote:
> A patch on which the author is continuing to work even in the absence of review
> should be considered a WIP "want feedback" submission; it should not
> be allowed to constitute a "placeholder" for inclusion in the
> release.

To be fair, I doubt that anyone actually believes that. If they did,
they wouldn't have to pay attention very long to receive a rude
awakening.

> <onlyhalfkidding>Perhaps we should have a concept of "feature
> months" -- so that when we look at holding up a release with 20
> features for two months so that one more feature can make it in, the
> cost side of the equation is 40 feature-months, and the benefit is
> 10 feature-months.  (Remember, you can't count the added feature as
> though it's there for a year before the next release if it holds the
> release up.)</onlyhalfkidding>

I am broadly in favour of assessing the value of features in the same
way that a commercial organisation might - the more adoption a feature
spurs, the more valuable it is, and the more hesitant we should be to
bump it (though other factors are also very important). I take this
idea seriously, or at the very least share the mentality of the idea -
I'm just not sure that we can formalise it, or that we should.

I also think that we should try and reward good will. I think that we
generally do so, but an automatic cut-off date seems contrary to that.
The law of unintended consequences might see us lower our standards to
commit something to meet the deadline, that would otherwise not be
immediately committed. We're only human, and it would be foolish to
assume that committers don't feel that kind of pressure.
--
Peter Geoghegan       http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
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