Drop Alphas and Betas (was Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing")

[Scott Kitterman]

On Monday, June 18, 2012 03:42:49 PM Rodney Dawes wrote:
> Ditën e Mon, 18/06/2012 më 15.30 -0400, Scott Kitterman ka shkruar:
> > On Monday, June 18, 2012 01:30:34 PM Chris Wilson wrote:
> > ...
> > 
> > > I also think adding the "Release Candidate (RC)" designation towards the
> > > end of the cycle would encourage more people who are quite wary of
> > > installing pre-release software on their computer to get involved with
> > > last
> > > minute testing since RC indicates that it's pretty much done and all
> > > that's
> > > left is to iron out some minor glitches.
> > 
> > ...
> > We used to call what's now Beta 1 a "Release Candidate" for similar
> > reasons, but renamed it because it's not really a release candidate. 
> > Generally "Release Candidate" means "Thing that will get released if no
> > new significant issues turn up".  Our current usage matches that and we
> > should stick with it. I don't like the idea of turning Release Candidate
> > into a marketing term in order to encourage more testing.
> 
> And I think the idea here is that every single daily image fits into
> that category of what we're calling a "Release Candidate." If we
> maintain high quality throughout the cycle, then at any point after
> the higher level freezes (feature, UI, string, etc…) we could
> theoretically point to any image and say "this is the release
> candidate." If we can't do that, then we should at least be able to
> isolate where and why we can't (particular packages not meeting the
> quality standards, introducing problems late in cycle, etc…), and
> work on preventing that from happening in the future.

Up until the last translation import is finished, we know everything is not a 
release candidate.  After that, I agree.

Scott K