Fedora 18 schedule slips by a week

At a go/no-go meeting of the Fedora QA Team, the developers decided to postpone the release of the first Fedora 18 alpha by a week. The team unanimously voted to not go forward with the release because of the relatively large number of blocker bugs that are still unresolved.

At the latest count, there are still 18 open bugs currently classed as blocking the release; these bugs have been deemed important enough that they must be fixed before the alpha can be released. The developers also called attention to the incomplete test matrices for the alpha, which suggest that not enough testing has been done on the code base.

The next go/no-go meeting will be held on 30 August and if all the release criteria are satisfied at that point, the first alpha of Fedora 18 will be released on 4 September. The delay will ripple through the Fedora 18 release schedule and would therefore move the final release of Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" back to 13 November. This date presumes that there are no other delays in the release schedule; it has, however, become a relatively common occurrence for a Fedora release to slip multiple times because of the focus on ensuring a good quality release.

(fab)