The workload on the foundation staff was discussed a bit (during the AC Side of the F2F meeting). This is certainly something we need to be aware of, but we should also better understand where the workload comes from. Three comments
- Not every project will be 'releasing' every 4 months. Some will ship SRs, while others may even ship their previous contributions.
- Are smaller Release Reviews easier? For example, if the delta between R1 and R2 was a small number of commits, all done by committers, with no update to external libs -- is that easier than a large number of commits, external contributions and updated third party dependencies? We currently define releases in terms of functionality, but that might not map to the complexity of a release review.
- Wayne mentioned that maybe we should reconsider how we approach this. Maybe each project needs to do a 'legal review' on an annual basis, but that's not directly tied to a release -- of course this idea would need to be flushed out, and if a project failed a legal review after it was released, then what? In a perfect world, each project would always be in a legally stable state, then a release should be easy. Orion would like to release every 2 weeks, but does it make sense for them to do a 'release review' this often?
The key is that we should not toss out an idea right now because of our current way of working. Change is possible. However, for any of this to happen, the PC as a whole isn't going to do it. Someone will need to step up and be the driving force (write a proposal).
Cheers, and I hope everyone made it home safe!
Ian