HeinzJ wrote:
What the hell is the reason for 3 days for new releases. Or even NULL days! (from 1.8.0 to 1.8.1 on 11.10.2006). There are a lot of people who intend to install the newest stable software and invest a lot of time in it.
Please mark new releases as what they are. Stable, Alphas, Minors, Beta, Patches.
The quarterly branch releases are branched from trunk every three months, and are stable as far as we are aware since they are the same software that we're running at the time.
When we're made aware of additional serious problems with the last branch (usually for installations and upgrades on rare configurations that we don't have access to) we release a fix on that branch as soon as possible precisely so that those people who "intent to install the newest stable software" will have it work for them.
Of course you should always be aware that MediaWiki is primarily in-house software for the Wikimedia Foundation's use. We make no guarantees of stability or suitability for any use.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)