I was at the Open Source SIG meeting last night. After the meeting, I had the opportunity to speak with Chris Maresca, co-founder of Olliance Group, a company that specializes in consulting services for open source strategy. We were discussing open source in the enterprise, and I asked him his opinion about the “release early, release often” mantra that became so well-known, due in part to Eric Raymond’s classic text The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Is it actually a useful mantra? How important is it? His answer: it is important.
I then asked what he considered to be “often”. Is that once a week, every two weeks, once a month, or longer? He said, “Don’t release something that doesn’t work, but beyond that, that you should release as soon as possible.” I pressed him a little further, and he replied, “aim for every two weeks. Don’t go longer than four weeks.”
This jives with my own experiences. Increasing the transparency between a company and its community is important. A good way to do this is to show that the software is actively being worked on, that it is improving over time. In a sense, the end result is not the only focus. The process of how we get there is equally important. By releasing code more often, the community can see bugs being fixed, it can see new features being integrated into the project, and it can get a feel for the pulse of the project.
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