Considering that Easter is on April 16th, we'd probably want to have the release before that date even in case of a slip.
On the other hand, the Christmas / New Year break here means that we'll have to make the development time 1-2 week shorter in practice. 2016-02-21 2.9 soft freeze 2016-03-07 hard freeze / rc0 2016-03-28 rc3 (+3 weeks) 2016-04-04 rc4 or release 2016-04-11 release (if rc4) One possibility is to make soft freeze happen a few days later. Peter/Stefan, how did the experiment go with the new rules for soft freeze? Is it worth repeating it for 2.9 and would it make sense to shorten soft freeze given the new rules? Thanks, Paolo