Hi Giovanni -

>> In my experience this [committing other people's time]
>> has *always* been a fatal error in a volunteer open 
>> source project.
> 
> Well, that goes against what I had in mind. My point was allowing the
> various team and developer to declare how much time they can commit in
> the coming months, and then plan accordingly. I should have expressed
> this explicitly.

Right. I actually interpreted you that way with the response to that 
point being: What if people can't commit explicitly over that period of 
time? Does that mean there will be no release because you can't make 
plans? I actually find that situation quite likely in the form that 
people may be able to outline the broad strokes of the area that they'll 
*probably* want to look at, but not specific enough to say that they're 
going to invest X hours into solving problem Y. That was my whole point 
after all, that "planning accordingly" can only mean not to plan 
anything other than how you're going to spend your own time in making 
the release.

> In your case, according to the process I'm proposing, you would just
> declare that you can't commit any predetermined time for the next six
> months.
> Now, what if a couple of months after your declaration you have some
> time to work on, say, Graphics, and you're able to produce new releases
> of that package? If when this happens 3.10 is still in alpha, your new
> releases could be included without many problems (excluding integration
> problems, that is); if in beta or gamma, then your changes should be
> moved to the next version. But this would not forbid you to work on it;
> it would just postpone its integration.

Exactly. On this we fully agree - keep things moving. Really, my only 
problem with your proposal is the upfront commitment and what that 
implies. If you drop the requirement that people have to declare X 
months ahead how much time they're going to spend where, we're fully in 
sync.

[... long snip ...]

> Ok, then would it be possible to integrate my proposal with yours?

I think we're pretty close already. My only concern is that I don't want 
to depend on people signing up for lofty goals beforehand ;-) Hey, if 
they want to do that voluntarily, I'll gladly take it. I just won't stop 
the release process or blame them if they don't come through. They're 
volunteers after all. And of course, like Brad said, there is an art to 
it which we need to learn but I think it can be done.

Cheers,
   - Andreas