Release cycles: What a GREAT project!

[temporaryuser]

Hello all,

thank you for your update today to 16.1.7.

I came from pfSense and am still very new to this project. Currently I am still in the state of exploring everything and testing OPNsense, comparing it to pfSense, etc. but I can say already that I am impressed of how your project "looks and feels".

Among others, I find the positive and very polite vibes in the forum and on github noteworthy, as well as your ambitious and well organized fixed release cycles. I understand, that your fork is not long ago and that many things still might not be as mature as at pfSense, but I expect that if you continue with your fast pace and positive flow, soon you will have taken the lead in Free and Open Source Firewalls. Your openness is key to that, too.

Thank you a lot!

Cheers
temporaryuser

P.S. I saw that the last minor releases where all occurring on a weekly base, every Wednesday. Is that coincidence or did you arrange a fixed release plan for the minor releases, too?

[franco]

Hi temporaryuser,

And here we still feel there is much more to do -- we're already discussing goals and challenges for 16.7 and even 17.1 on the horizon.

Weekly updates were something we've always wanted to do. In the beginning this shifted quite a bit although the overall ratio was true (a bit over 50 releases in all of 2015). Some people didn't like Friday/Saturday updates and Monday was too soon for us to get everything out the door so eventually all converged towards Wednesday.

I think we're keeping this fixed on Wednesday for now unless there is something interfering with it like a travel schedule or major upgrades that tend to take an extra day (traditionally Thursday). But to be honest, we just happened to end up with Wednesday and it's working out rather well. I'm ok with that. Haven't heard a bad word about it since from the users, too.

As fas as community goes we've been very lucky. I particularly enjoy the quick user feedback loops, the vast majority of "as long as you don't break my setup feel free to do whatever" and the good people on IRC. Especially in the beginning, there were a lot of strong discussions about what OPNsense needed to go forward. Scaling ideas from the m0n0wall people, or a long list of requests and prioritisation for features from multiple sides plus a few commercial supporters that simply said "ok, let's do this then". Looking back a lot has happened from within and without. The goal has always been to simplify and polish the user experience, whether in the GUI, API, documentation, forum, Twitter, IRC, etc. I hope that shows a bit every now and then.

And if there is one fundamental idea behind the positive community, then it's this: being polite doesn't always help, but it certainly never hurts.


Cheers,
Franco