[dev] Horde 6 vs. Horde 5.3

[Jan Schneider]

Hi,

since we have been asked recently when to expect Horde 6, and what  
could be done to speed up its release, I'd like to discuss an  
alternative option to release Horde 5.3 first.

Many new features have gone into master since the Horde 5.2 release,  
few of them sponsored by clients or contributed by the community. The  
expectation to see those features in a stable release within a  
foreseeable timeframe is more than justified.

We could speed up the Horde 6 release by additional sponsoring, but  
it's not only a matter of money, but also a matter of developer  
resources. With Michael and me being the only remaining active core  
developers at the moment, we rather lack developer time. Especially  
for core development like infrastructure stuff, namespace refactoring  
etc. that are not easy for contributors to jump in.

AFAIK we don't have any BC breaks in master yet, at least none that  
couldn't be solved with bumped dependencies. So doing a 5.3 release  
should work. Michael, please correct me if I'm missing something.

The flipside is, that:
- Horde 6 will delay even further
- we won't be able to do any refactoring, e.g. switching to namespaces
- we won't have a repository split that would make the libraries more  
attractive, e.g. by being available via composer/packagist and thus  
attracting external developers
- we won't be able to do long-anticipated BC breaks that currently  
hinder some development

The discussion is open.

Jan.

-- 
Jan Schneider
The Horde Project
http://www.horde.org/