Minutes of the ESC call 2012-10-11

[Rainer Bielefeld]

Thorsten Behrens schrieb:

>      + 3.5 MAB needs cherry-picking and folding into 3.6 MAB (some
>        don't seem to be valid most annoying)

Hi,

I already started my traditional "End of Lifecycle MAB cleanup", results on
<http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/HardHacks#Proposed_Hard_Hacks>
I will shift 3.5 MAB to 3.6 MAB if appropriate of make different 
suggestions.
Keeping current speed this will take until end 2012

>      + some thoughts around another 3.5 release

Although I was one of those who brought up these thoughts, I believe 
it's not realistic to hope that an other 3.5 release with 2 or 3 
additional bugfixes will bring significant benefit.
But I believe for 3.6 we should rethink our release policy. We should 
not terminate work on a version  3.6 because most people loose interest 
(because they are busy with next release 3.7), that leads to a situation 
as we have with 3.5.7 that still 77 MAB are unfixed and nobody know why, 
but because the version is ready.

Of course I know that it never will be possible to get really all Bugs 
fixed, but selection what these "remaining unfixed bugs" should be done 
by a founded decision and not by coincidence.

May be something like this can help to avoid surprises 8only a first 
thought):

final release -4 is out:
-----------------------
QA does all possible efforts to sort out inappropriate MAB and and to 
add all required info to those bug so that they are really "ready for 
fixing" by developers.

final release -3 is out:
------------------------
Remaining well prepared MAB will be deployed to developers similar to 
the HardHack proceeding. (QA-calls, ESC-calls, ...)

final release -2 is out:
------------------------
If developers recognize that it will not be possible to fix particular 
bugs with acceptable "costs" and risk, they add them to a Wiki table 
(prepared by QA) with a short statement concerning these problems.
That will allow additional efforts to get fixes "somehow" overcoming 
these problems

final release -1 is out:
------------------------
Same as before

Final is out
------------
final discussion concerning remaining unfixed MAB, shift to next 
version's MAB, if appropriate, or what ever else, even may be to do a 
"Final + 1 release" because a solution to fix important remaining MAB 
has been found.

Best regards

Rainer