Chris,  all:

> Well, I note (and I'm not being unkind or anything here) that a lot of
> the high level committers we have haven't been so active this release.
> Peter and Joe haven't been around much and Jan has been busy with Slony.
>   We also lost Thomas Lockhart.  Neil's also away on holidays.  You and
> Tom have basically been doing all the reviewing - a great job - but I
> can't believe Tom hasn't cracked yet :P

Actually, this is a *big* part of the problem.   In 7.3, by unplanned 
circumstance, we got into a cycle of doing feature freeze and starting beta 
during the summer.   This is a bad cycle -- the Europeans take their 3-week 
vacations, the Americans go to (and spend many hours preparing for) a bunch 
of conventions, Students go to internships, people take long weekends, get 
married, etc.   ( This is probably why many American corporations end their 
fiscal year in midsummer; nothing is going to get done anyway, might as well 
clean up. )

The result is that we chronically have less manpower when just when we need 
everybody.   And some of us end up spending 11 hours a day in front of the 
screen when we should be outside soaking up Vitamin D.

Therefore, I propose that the next version either feature freeze in March or 
in October, but NOT in May-August.  Which we do -- March or October -- can be 
based on an evaluation of the outstanding post-7.5 patches in January.   

-- 
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

Tue, 13 Jul 2004 10:06:37 -0700
Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
Re: Assisting developers
Josh Berkus wrote:
> Chris,  all:
> 
> > Well, I note (and I'm not being unkind or anything here) that a lot of
> > the high level committers we have haven't been so active this release.
> > Peter and Joe haven't been around much and Jan has been busy with Slony.
> >   We also lost Thomas Lockhart.  Neil's also away on holidays.  You and
> > Tom have basically been doing all the reviewing - a great job - but I
> > can't believe Tom hasn't cracked yet :P
> 
> Actually, this is a *big* part of the problem.   In 7.3, by unplanned 
> circumstance, we got into a cycle of doing feature freeze and starting beta 
> during the summer.   This is a bad cycle -- the Europeans take their 3-week 
> vacations, the Americans go to (and spend many hours preparing for) a bunch 
> of conventions, Students go to internships, people take long weekends, get 
> married, etc.   ( This is probably why many American corporations end their 
> fiscal year in midsummer; nothing is going to get done anyway, might as well 
> clean up. )
> 
> The result is that we chronically have less manpower when just when we need 
> everybody.   And some of us end up spending 11 hours a day in front of the 
> screen when we should be outside soaking up Vitamin D.
> 
> Therefore, I propose that the next version either feature freeze in March or 
> in October, but NOT in May-August.  Which we do -- March or October -- can be 
> based on an evaluation of the outstanding post-7.5 patches in January.   

True, but northern-hemisphere summer is only 6 weeks old, and we have
had these issues for many months --- it isn't a new problem.   Alvaro
didn't get the feedback he needed in March either.  :-(

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Tue, 13 Jul 2004 13:16:39 -0400 (EDT)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: Assisting developers
Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > The result is that we chronically have less manpower when just when we need 
> > everybody.   And some of us end up spending 11 hours a day in front of the 
> > screen when we should be outside soaking up Vitamin D.
> > 
> > Therefore, I propose that the next version either feature freeze in March or 
> > in October, but NOT in May-August.  Which we do -- March or October -- can be 
> > based on an evaluation of the outstanding post-7.5 patches in January.   
> 
> True, but northern-hemisphere summer is only 6 weeks old, and we have
> had these issues for many months --- it isn't a new problem.   Alvaro
> didn't get the feedback he needed in March either.  :-(

Oh, and neither did Simon.  :-(

In fact Simon coded a whole client-side approach to PITR before I
studied his ideas and realized it needs to be done as a server
subprocess.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Tue, 13 Jul 2004 13:21:03 -0400 (EDT)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: Assisting developers
On Tue, 13 Jul 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> True, but northern-hemisphere summer is only 6 weeks old, and we have 
> had these issues for many months --- it isn't a new problem.  Alvaro 
> didn't get the feedback he needed in March either.  :-(

This is true, but Josh does have a point ... you took a much needed 12 
days off end of June, Tom took a few days in July ... both in middle of 
the feature freeze ... if we were in 'dev mode' through the summer months, 
those wouldn't have been as critical, but even once you got back, you had, 
what, 2k messages to weed through?

At least up in Canada, our summers are so short, we try and squeeze as 
much out of it as possible, so our time is more split then the rest of the 
year when we tend to stay indoors alot more ...



----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org           Yahoo!: yscrappy              ICQ: 7615664

Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:48:39 -0300 (ADT)
"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@postgresql.org>
Re: Assisting developers
Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Jul 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> 
> > True, but northern-hemisphere summer is only 6 weeks old, and we have 
> > had these issues for many months --- it isn't a new problem.  Alvaro 
> > didn't get the feedback he needed in March either.  :-(
> 
> This is true, but Josh does have a point ... you took a much needed 12 
> days off end of June, Tom took a few days in July ... both in middle of 
> the feature freeze ... if we were in 'dev mode' through the summer months, 
> those wouldn't have been as critical, but even once you got back, you had, 
> what, 2k messages to weed through?
> 
> At least up in Canada, our summers are so short, we try and squeeze as 
> much out of it as possible, so our time is more split then the rest of the 
> year when we tend to stay indoors alot more ...

True.  Things for the past few weeks have been worse, but we are geting
though that quickly.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:27:28 -0400 (EDT)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: Assisting developers
On Tue, 13 Jul 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>> On Tue, 13 Jul 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>>
>>> True, but northern-hemisphere summer is only 6 weeks old, and we have
>>> had these issues for many months --- it isn't a new problem.  Alvaro
>>> didn't get the feedback he needed in March either.  :-(
>>
>> This is true, but Josh does have a point ... you took a much needed 12
>> days off end of June, Tom took a few days in July ... both in middle of
>> the feature freeze ... if we were in 'dev mode' through the summer months,
>> those wouldn't have been as critical, but even once you got back, you had,
>> what, 2k messages to weed through?
>>
>> At least up in Canada, our summers are so short, we try and squeeze as
>> much out of it as possible, so our time is more split then the rest of the
>> year when we tend to stay indoors alot more ...
>
> True.  Things for the past few weeks have been worse, but we are geting
> though that quickly.

Granted, but that wasn't Josh's point :)  The point is, a March/October 
feature freeze would (should) have alot less issues as far as ppls time is 
concerned then a summer one (either Southern or Northern hemisphere 
summer) ...

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org           Yahoo!: yscrappy              ICQ: 7615664

Tue, 13 Jul 2004 15:34:05 -0300 (ADT)
"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@postgresql.org>
Re: Assisting developers
Josh Berkus wrote:
> ( This is
> probably why many American corporations end their fiscal year in
> midsummer; nothing is going to get done anyway, might as well clean
> up. )

And that is also the time when volunteers will have the most time to 
spare.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/


Tue, 13 Jul 2004 21:45:01 +0200
Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Re: Assisting developers