William Allen Simpson wrote:
> I don't understand why 6+ months is spent coming out with a "patch" 1.6.1 
> version, instead of a designated set of features for 1.7 version.  It 
> seemed to be about the same amount of work!

Well, 1.6.1 was not 'coming out' 6 months. 1.6.1 release process
was something about month IIRC, and only because some more security
issues were discovered late in cycle (sendmail I think).

Maintenance/Patch release is matter of decision; enough
of bugfixes gathered to warrant a new patch release, so we did it.
The required efford is nowhere near implementing and stabilizing
major new functionality, like SMP or threads (or kqueue, for that
matter); I think most of releng 1.6.1 work (pullups) was done by 2-3
people working in spare time.

For 2.0 (i.e. next major release after 1.6, there won't be any 1.7
release), there are AFAIK just two designated features - SMP support on
i386 and as many other arches as possible, and fully working real
POSIX threads.

> It may be time to re-think the production schedule.  I know you'll 
> hate hearing this, but OpenBSD seems to do it, why not NetBSD?

Maybe because NetBSD actually does significant primary development
and debugging?

Jaromir
-- 
Jaromir Dolecek <jdolecek@NetBSD.org>            http://www.NetBSD.cz/
-=- We should be mindful of the potential goal, but as the tantric    -=-
-=- Buddhist masters say, ``You may notice during meditation that you -=-
-=- sometimes levitate or glow.   Do not let this distract you.''     -=-