Re: [Gnu-arch-users] gnuarch 1.2.1 released!

[Tom Lord]

    > From: address@hidden (James Blackwell)

    > Subject: Re: [Gnu-arch-users] gnuarch 1.2.1 released!

That's great news and all, however, a small nit:

GNU Arch is maintained (with the help of volunteers such as yourself) 
by the GNU project and the GNU project makes releases.   You can 
recognize GNU releases because they appear on FSF web sites and
because the GNU maintainer (that would be) announces them.

It's needlessly confusing to call your release 1.2.1.

The confusion just gets worse here because, in essense, you have
*prepared* the GNU arch 1.2.1 release.  It's the same release; you did
it; etc --- but the actual release has to be made by someone else.

In the future, could you please announce, instead, something like:

  The release manager for GNU Arch 1.2.1 has declared that 
  tla-1.2.1.rc2 [or whatever] is now ready for release.

  Barring unforseen snafus, this release candidate should be
  promoted to an FSF release within the next few days.  

  In the meanwhile, users who would like to get started with 
  it immediately can download it at _____.

>From there, whoever is doing GNU foo (me at the moment) can turn that
into a formal release.

What I'm trying to aim for here is to preserve an authoratative line
of development (GNU Arch) so that people can generally go there to get
the latest and greatest but at the same to to scale up the number of
maintainers producing that line of development and at the same time to
scale up the level of review/care/many-eyeballs that get to filter
that line of development --- all in order to make sure that the GNU
arch line keeps a happy pace while retaining overall quality and
robustness against the dubious ideas of any one contributor.

-t