Hi all,

I am starting a separate thread as the other thread has veered off in a very 
different direction. The ground rules for this thread are that we are not 
discussing branching models or release strategy here.

Some folks in the community had the following questions and concerns:

1. Lack of clarity on how is stability and quality is being measured.
2. Lack of visibility on the progress to stabilizing 4.0.
3. Lack of clarity on what is remaining to get 4.0 to a stable state.

My 2 cents on these 3 questions are as follows:

As a baseline expectation, we thought big users of Cassandra should be running 
the latest trunk internally and testing it out for their particular use cases. 
We wanted them to file as many jiras as possible based on their experience. 
Operations such as host replacement, expansions, shrinks, etc. and obviously 
any issues with durability, performance, availability. This was thought to 
generate a body of work (jiras), when fixed, over time would stabilize trunk. 
When we see the trickle of new jiras coming to a halt or at least nothing 
serious shows up, thats when the big users of Cassandra would feel comfortable 
running the build in prod. This would be a good time to cut the final stable 
release.

We also created a confluence doc for a test plan with major areas that require 
testing. There were shepherds that were tentatively assigned[1]. The rationale 
for this doc was that these areas have significantly changed and we need more 
eye balls on it to ensure stability. The shepherds would help guide the testing 
for these areas.

I think the big missing piece is that we don't know who is actively running 
trunk internally and how aggressive their timelines are in getting to a stable 
4.0. However, we can see new jiras being reported every day. There are also a 
lot of open jiras that require attention and they are being reported by diverse 
set of Cassandra users which is great. I think everyone would like to see a 
stable release in ~6 months from now. The quality of this release will be 
dependent on how aggressively everyone in the community tests the release in 
the coming weeks and months.

The final concern was around some people felt that the lack of visible activity 
signals that the project is dead. While I don't fully agree with this 
assessment, I suspect sending a periodic update on new issues or test runs that 
people are running to the mailing list would definitely help keeping everyone 
engaged. It also helps bring visibility to the community. I am not 100% sure 
whether it is feasible for everyone to share what they're doing internally but 
I think if you're working on something, summarizing on a weekly or biweekly 
basis can help the community. This is just a thought and if there are other 
suggestions, lets discuss them without shooting down new ideas (assume positive 
intent).

Thanks,

Dinesh

[1] 
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CASSANDRA/4.0+Quality%3A+Components+and+Test+Plans
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