Now, how often should we stabilize the code?
I say that every other month, lets take for example the even months, (2, 4 and so on)
And then we all should work on debugging for the first ten days.
Then we can have a release on the 10th of every other month.
If you all agree, next stabilization begins this next April 1st.
Sounds like a well-thought-out plan, Andres. Getting everyone into a routine should help the process quite a bit. It also gives programmers a date to shoot for and in essence will serve as a "deadline" to get changes finished. That should be a great motivator.
I do have one suggestion, though. Would it be possible to figure out which parts of OpenEMR each developer is working on? That way some overlap can be avoided. Perhaps create teams that are responsible for different functions.
For example, there could be a sub-group of people working on adding a new function while another sub-group could be working on making all the forms conform to the same standards, etc…
I don’t know if that will work or if it even makes sense, but I thought I’d at least put the idea out there.
On a side note, although I’m not actually doing any programming, the 50-day (give or take a day or two) window between the end of debugging and the next stabilization date should be more than sufficient turn-around time for me to update the user manual each time. (I’m volunteering to do that for consistency’s sake.)
My thoughts exactly. We need to create some teams of sorts. It may not be possible now, but something we should work towards. That brings me to another point, we need to create a todo list of sorts, so that we know what to focus on. I guess this will be driven by need, but some things are probably obvious.
We could start a separate thread as the OpenEMR "wish list" and use the posts to generate a "wish list". This could be prioritized and divied out to the developers who most interested in each project.
I recommend using the RFE (Request for Enhancements) feature of sourceforge.net. I also suggest that if a wish list of features is going to be prepared, that a means of financing those features be added to each feature.