[LAA] Reminder: Quarterly Release Pact (next release day 2021-01-15)

The release pact is an informal agreement to aim for shared, scheduled release dates. We agree to release at least four times a year: January, April, July and October the 15th. To participate you just need to do a release. There is no need to register in advance or ask for permission to participate. A release is an important step in the development and life of software. Users look forward to updates and improvements, but they mean additional work for developers. It is often very hard to decide if and when to release, so developers tend to wait and postpone. There do not seem to be any objective, measurable reasons that could lead to a decision. Therefore we have decided to use time as a basis. Why should you schedule (at least) four releases per year? Developer side: * Incentive to release something. Releases are better than git progress. They get packaged, they indicate a (relatively) good state of the program. * Momentum/Peer Pressure: Other people are going to release, so will I. * Healthy, Active Community: Being in a developer group that you see working (by their releases) is a good motivation to do something yourself. User side: * Announcements: Keep the software in the public eye * Trust. People see that the software is in development and is cared for. * The "last updated" date should never be more than 4 months away and always the current year. * Swarm Marketing: A small release does not have much impact and won't get featured often by news sites. A whole group of software releases demands more attention. At the moment we simply release on the same date, but in the future this could grow closer together. As in: joined press statements etc. Minimum Viable Release: * "Fixed typo in documentation" should be enough. Especially for software that has huge release intervals, like a year or longer, there is public uncertainty if a project is just "working as intended" or dead. A minor release with minimal changes is still a signal to the public that the software is not forgotten. * There is always something to do: Non-Code accomplishments like writing documentation and user manuals are also a (very good) reason to release Where can you announce a release? * Send a mail to linux-audio-announce(a)lists.linuxaudio.org .No registration needed for posting, the list is moderated. * Also send a mail to linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org and linux-audio-dev(a)lists.linuxaudio.org . Cross-Posting releases is accepted. These two lists need registration though. * Submit your release, or the whole software to https://libreav.org * Post to https://linuxmusicians.com/viewforum.php?f=24 * Submit a new link or text post to https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxaudio/ * Add or update your entry at https://gitlab.com/nodiscc/awesome-linuxaudio (see https://gitlab.com/nodiscc/awesome-linuxaudio/-/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md ) * Add or update your software to Wikipedia * Add or update your software on this wikipedia list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_audio_software * Chat with your developer-peers on freenodes IRC channel #lad ( Libre/Linux Audio Developers ) Miscellaneous * How to give version numbers: Semantic Versioning https://semver.org/ * Provide release notes and a CHANGELOG https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/ ("Don’t let your friends dump git logs into changelogs.") * Provide a real release as tarball and/or Github Gitlab release (resulting in a tarball). Distributions want a stable set of files for packaging. A git tag alone is not stable. * Check your software and information (like README, .desktop file, your own website etc.) if it is up to date. Take inspiration from one of the many release guides, such as https://radek.io/2015/11/23/release-checklist/ * The Documentation Compendium: "Why must you document your project? - Various templates & tips on writing high-quality documentation that people want to read." https://github.com/kylelobo/The-Documentation-Compendium#why_document * Does your software still create (dot-)files directly in the homedir? Start supporting the XDG Base Directory Specification https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html