GNOME 2.0 Desktop Release Schedule Change

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

Hi everyone,

The release team would like to announce a major change to the GNOME 2.0
Desktop release schedule, the beginnings of which you've already seen with
this week's Beta 2 release.

We have been working to a very aggressive schedule, and have achieved an
enormous amount so far: Development on the (now released) GTK+ libraries,
porting of the GNOME libraries and desktop, and many enhancements to the
developer platform were performed simultaneously. Whilst challenging, the
process has resulted in a greatly improved developer platform.

The GNOME 2.0 Desktop is largely performing better than 1.4, has seen
determined work on usability issues and compliancy with our draft Human
Interface Guidelines, and includes brand new accessibility features.

However, it is not yet ready for general release. We've balanced the two
Free Software mantras of "release early, release often" and "when it's
ready" by providing regular testing releases - including weekly snapshots
and three-weekly betas - and lengthening our schedule to allow for further
testing and bug fixing.

Two three-week periods will be added to the schedule, resulting in two beta
releases before assessing our readiness to ship Release Candidate 1. There
will be NO change to our current freeze requirements.

  2002-03-04: Desktop Beta 2 Packages Due
  2002-03-06: Desktop Beta 2 Release
  2002-03-25: Desktop Beta 3 Packages Due
  2002-03-27: Desktop Beta 3 Release
  2002-04-15: Desktop Release Candidate 1 Packages Due *
  2002-04-17: Desktop Release Candidate 1 Release *
  2002-04-29: Desktop Final Packages Due *
  2002-05-01: Desktop Final Release *

  [*] Please note that these are tentative release dates, and may be changed
  should the bug count and user experience suggest that more (or less!) work
  is required.

Our thanks to the many hackers contributing to GNOME 2.0, which is already
proving to be an excellent platform for the future of the GNOME Project.

- The GNOME 2.0 Release Team

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