The past view days I’ve witnessed some blogs and remarks on IRC-channels which are talking about a failure of the release team. As planets in general are the source of using more and more firm language, let me join the club: I don’t like them. Especially not the one which suggested to replace the release-team with the one doing the koffice releases (refering to the fact that they are labeling their release as alfa-release). Even though it was probably meant to be funny or something. It was not.

Troy indicates that we would be better of with a single release dude. I’m sorry but that is plain silly. In the lines above his statement he is blaming Ruurd to not say ‘plasma sucks, give me the old panel back’ with some very convincing arguments. In that light it is amazing that he ends his blog with ‘release team sucks, give me the (old) release dude back’. I wonder why this should be any different? Tell me exactly what the release-team did wrong and what the better alternative is, but please don’t forget to mention how the process can be improved. To be clear: I do agree it could be improved, but I’m not sure how to do it. But going back to a single release dude is a simplistic solution. Aaron already touched the subject in a recent blog.

The only reason I see mentioned in Troys blog is ‘there was less hesitation during decision making processes’. Sure. If one guy gets to decide, it’s pretty easy. If a group has to decide something there needs to be a discussion. Don’t confuse that discussion with ‘hesitation’, it’s simply not the case. It also does not say anything about the quality of the decision. Would the single release dude make better decisions than a group? A group can discuss pros and cons of a decision seen through the eyes of different people, which should lead to a bigger list of pros and cons and should lead to a better informed outcome. Or is it that people simply like firm statements better: this is how we are going to do it, no discussion possible.

It is true that the process of naming the releases is a bit difficult. We are constantly giving weight to the current state of KDE4 and what we want to reach and how to motivate people to do their part of The Job. One year ago there was no planning at all for KDE4. Since that moment we have decided on a planning, got people out of the ‘waiting’/'tinkering’-mode and we are now relatively close to a release. I believe that without a release team that would not have happened. Would it have happened with a single release-dude? We don’t know.

The release-team has answered a lot of questions on IRC (which is very difficult for a single release dude, considering contributions are made 24/7), kept the wiki up-to-date so everyone knows what freeze is active, which modules are problematic and discussed the inclusion/exclusion of some applications, coordinated with the marketing & promo & tagging team/persons about the release announcements, and all in coordination with the people doing the actual work on KDE4. The release-team is not a clearly defined group of people. It’s a mailinglist with people who discuss things, sometime people join a particular discussion and sometimes not. In my huble opinion this is working beyond my expectations, also considering this it the first time we try this.

I think it’s really demotivating to read that troy wants to return to a single release dude. I see this ‘careless demotivation’ happen a lot. People making simple, cheap remarks, but in the meanwhile hurting and demotivating others. Ruurd made a blog about Plasma – not so nice to read if it’s your code and you read that as the first thing in the morning. Troy about the Release Team. And it also has happened with some webkit remarks. Think twice.