Broadly, the new proposal (even if it is only in draft state) puts forward a shortened cycle time-based. In short: a version every X months. Shortened cycle means many more publications and much more advanced in incremental features and other news. This may also mean some problems when adding functionality with significant impact on the rest of the software.
Developers should review their method while looming version 3.1 of Thunderbird. This will in no way disruptive, and there understand that not result in any new fracture in the user experience. In fact the news, the additions are mostly elements originally planned for version 3.0 final, but the lack of time eventually eject planning.
According to the draft of the proposal, we would have a rate of:
- 4 to 6 months for a new version of Thunderbird
- 4 weeks for a new destination to preview testers
An operation that we finally found regularly in GNU / Linux distributions. Ubuntu for example comes in a new version every six months and a test version is usually published every two to four weeks during beta.
The development team wishes to return Thunderbird in Firefox versions of which are growing more rapidly. Not necessarily about synchronization in the works, this would allow Thunderbird to receive faster browser improvements, particularly the Gecko rendering engine.