release candidate out - plans

[Graham Percival]

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (or TL;DR)

- Release candidate 1 is out, and stable/2.14 has been branched.
- 2.14.0 will be 26 Jan 2011 unless a Critical bug is confirmed.
- only small doc patches, and any translation patches, will be
  accepted to stable/2.14 for the next two weeks, unless there's
  a Critical issue.
- don't push any syntax-changing patches to master for the next
  few weeks (until 2.15 has started).  Updates to convert-ly for
  existing syntax changes are fine.
- other than syntax-changing patches, go ahead and treat master
  like normal.


PATCH CUTOFF

I know that there's lots of good patches in the works, including
absolutely fantastic work on issues 36, 37, and 39, and it might
be disappointing to hear that these aren't going in 2.14.0.  But
it's been two years since the last stable release, and we need to
draw a line somewhere.

We can release 2.14.1 very soon after 2.14.0, so please don't fuss
too much about making users wait for 2 or 3 days (after 2.14.0)
before they can get a particular feature or bugfix.


TRANSLATORS

Do whatever you want to stable/2.14 as long as you only touch
stuff in Documentation/??/ and it still compiles.


SYNTAX

We're comitted to supporting the 2.14.0 syntax for all subsequent
2.14.x releases.  This means that *new* syntax is ok, but you
cannot *change* or *remove* any syntax.  If you have any such
patches, please keep them in your own private branch until 2.15
starts.

Note that we are not committed to having a long 2.14 period.  If
we wanted to, we could simply release 2.14.0 and then immediately
start 2.15.  We'll discuss this after 2.14 is out.  The chief
concern is how many volunteers we have for branch management work.


Cheers,
- Graham