8:31 p.m.
Hi friends:
I had a very cogent realization yesterday while doing final edits on the
chapter "Announcing Software Releases".
Bet you know where this is going ...
tl;dnr
======
* We are releasing the 2.0 version of the guide tomorrow. Congratulations!
* We are planning a big splash about the release for mid-January 2021. Cool!
* Polish and content will continue to come in; splashy release will
probably be 2.0.1 technically. *Whew*
Here's the cogent part:
=======================
Re-reading through everything but with an eye on the whole book has been
a great experience these last few weeks. I got a chance to reflect on
the many principles in the guide we've been following, and where we
still have some work to do as a project.
Sometimes it's a small thing. For example, I started adding
"Signed-off-by: Karsten Wade <kwade(a)redhat.com>" for a DCO to my git
commit messages. (That is most likely going to be a recommendation in a
future chapter on legal topics.)
Sometimes it's a larger thing, like realizing that we really didn't
prepare ourselves to announce a release tomorrow:
https://www.theopensourceway.org/the_open_source_way-guidebook-2.0.html#_...
There are a few key advantages in waiting for mid-January:
* People are looking forward to getting away from work/tech in many of
the places we are announcing to. There is a lot of tech news going on
right now. Something announcing this week would be missed by much of our
audience.
* We can polish up a release announcement and materials to make it all a
better splash. That helps us reach our audiences, too.
* We can do a proper Press Release, if we wish. That would be cool.
* Additional polish and material can continue with the guide as we close
toward the date.
* We might be able to do a bit of evolution on our branding by then.[1]
The original reason for mid-Dec 2020 began in Oct 2019. The idea was to
do a splashy release at a DevRel event this week. It continued to remain
a good milestone for finishing the content. It turns out not to be a
good milestone for making a splashy announcement in the year 2020.
Oh, well, live and learn. :)
Kind regards,
- Karsten
[1]
--
Karsten Wade [he/him/his]| Senior Community Architect | @quaid
Red Hat Open Source Program Office (OSPO) : @redhatopen
https://community.redhat.com | https://next.redhat.com | https://osci.io
https://theopensourceway.org | https://github.com/theopensourceway/guide