Folks, In opening this thread ( Nabble http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/stable-vs-new-tp4068750.html ) Tom is correct in a practical sense. Stability is an inherent component of a mature product. And testing during the development cycles by more potential user willing to invest a little time in QA is essential to the health of the project.
But a key aspect Tom omits is that LibreOffice development and release stages are tightly timed--and by proxy so is its support. Nor does he mention that the project has stayed on schedule since inception--synchronizing to a six month minor release cycle implemented in a broader ecosystem of Free and Open Source Software. The Release Plan for LibreOffice publishes the release schedule, current status and a historical record of the project, worth a read: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Release_Plan Keeping to the time based release plan means that the delay between initial release on a minor version and the next minor version release is just six months. And that the delay between the x.x.0 release and each bug fix release has been and will continue to be just one month. So, while I don't completely agree Toms' assessment of how far along each bug fix takes things--it is just not the way the user feedback, QA,and development work proceeds--but it is not unreasonable practical advise. Support has kept to the same cycle--for the most part--user documentation (static HTML or wiki based, and published) can always use more active contributors and lags a bit as a result. This is not just development churn, there is solid User eXperience, QA and development work at every tick of the release cycle. And as a minor release nears end of its development life it gets less and less development attenetion--QA and development resources long since shifted to new development and bug fixes. Enhancements and bug fixes become more and more costly to push backward with each tick in development cycle--so less likely to occur. In a sense that also is stability, or maybe stagnation. The project is on sound footings as a time based release, that is not going to change so no sense in debating it here. Rather, if you have specific questions or comments about its implementation or how best to make use of software from time based release manged project that would be a worthwhile discussion. Stuart a LibreOffice QA volunteer, focusing on accessibility issues. p.s. For use Accessibility and Assistive Technology tools the use of a Java 7, Java Runtime Environment and the Java Access Bridge v2.0.3 was not ported backward to the 3.6.x branch. It was included in the 4.1.0 release, and has been patched for the upcoming 4.0.5 release. Users of 3.6.x must continue to use a Java 6 JRE (e.g. 1.6u45) and manual install of Java Access Bridge v2.0.2. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
