Re: 8.2 features status

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> I know about the same as the community members who pay attention to
> postings.  What I do is to act on that information by contacting
> developers and asking them to complete their work for feature freeze.
> Many of my conversations are not appropriate for the public, which is
> why it is done privately.
>
> In fact, the feedback I have gotten from some community members that
> have heard a little of the discussions I have had with developers is
> that I am too forceful.  I know that doesn't match my often non-critical
> or even lax handling of things, but I take my community responsibility
> seriously, and if someone has stated they are working on an item, I
> expect them to take that pledge seriously as well.
>   

Is that a response from other developers, or from those you have pressed 
a bit? Perhaps the fact that the process is so very informal has led 
people to false expectations anyway. Maybe if we were quite up front 
about it people would not get upset. "If you say you will work on 
feature X, expect an occasional ping from someone asking about progress."

> As far as people always asking for better tracking, they used to always
> ask for a roadmap, and when we stated we couldn't because we have no
> control over developers, they pointed to Mozilla, which had a roadmap at
> the time (but we know what happened to them.)
>   

This seems to me to be a case of the well known fallacy "post hoc ergo 
propter hoc". The fact that mozilla had some less than good results does 
not mean that everything they did was wrong.

> In the case of recursive queries, I did more than might have even been
> polite to try to get the developer to complete it.  I don't see how
> changing our system is going to improve it.  If you want to change the
> system, find a system that would have actually done better than what we
> have in place. 
>
> Or try a new system, and I will keep doing what I do, and we can see
> which system works best.
>
>   

Excellent idea. We don't have to have a one size fits all set of 
procedures anyway - in fact I think it might be a mistake. Maybe we 
should select a few major features that people will work on for 8.3 and 
try a different model. We could then assess things around this time next 
cycle.

cheers

andrew