My Joomla News

Recently, Johan Janssens (aka Jinx in the forums) made a great post on the Joomla! Dev Team Blog (click here to read up).

Johan wrote about some peoples concerns regarding what a Release Candidate is, and about how he would rather the RCs be labelled as beta versions of Joomla!

(Photo by Beth Kanter. Published on flikr.com)

In a wide ranging blog post, Johan talked about the origins of the Joomla! project, from the Mambo split, to the Joomla 1.0 release, through to Joomla! relationship with the GPL licence.

The big message that Johan was talking about was that the Joomla! users should not lose sight of the larger project. Joomla 1.5 may be the next big release, but it has taken a very short time to get here, and in that time the Joomla! project has grown exponentially. We should not be rushing this next exciting step, as it is just one step constantly moving forward, forward together. Or as Johan said:

In the last year we went from crawling to slowly learning to stand up, let us not try to run before we can walk.

But the biggest news is that Joomla! fans will be seeing further RC’s in the future. Joomla ! 1.5 RC4 will be the next release, and possibly many more after that. But users should not be concerned, these RC’s are in excellent shape, and a large part of their release is to help the core developers and volunteers squash the last bugs, and the new bugs that appear during optimisation (the final stage of every development). Johan on future RC’s:

For the coming weeks an months I expect us to release RC’s using a release early, release often strategy. With intervals of about 4/5 weeks. How many RC’s it will take us to get 1.5 stable, I don’t know and to be honest I don’t care. As long as the next RC is more stable as the previous one and so on I’m confident we will get there.

Johan also had some sage advice for the impatient among us (including myself I’m afraid) about posting in the forum for a release date for a “stable” Joomla! 1.5.

Next time you think about asking ask one of our working group members when 1.5 will be released ? Don’t bother. The only answer he can give you is : ‘It will be done when it’s done’!’ Instead consider asking him ‘How can I help ?’. I’m certain you will get a very open and friendly reaction. Think about !

I think we can consider this the last word on that question.

I am sure that many people will have different reactions about Johan’s message. Some groups where still holding onto hope that they would have a “stable” version of Joomla 1.5 by the end of November. I don’t know how they will be changing their plans now, but I know what I’m going to do. I’m downloading the Nightly Build of 1.5 and doing some testing of my own. Let’s get to work!