Beside this event 5 other releases were done for OOo. So there were a lot work for the QA and release teams last year. 6 releases are more than in the past years!

The 6 product releases for OOo in 2008

• OOo 2.4
  • released end of March 2008 (with a delay of round about one month)
  • was the last but biggest feature release on OOo 2.x code line
• OOo 3.0 Beta 1
  • released mid of April 2008
  • nearly all features for OOo 3.0 were integrated
• OOo 2.4.1
  • released mid of June 2008
  • was the last bigger regular bug fix release on OOo 2.x code line (the next updates on OOo 2.x code line will fix security and very critical issues only)
• OOo 3.0 Beta 2
  • released begin of July 2008
  • final feature set for OOo 3.0 were integrated and stabilization of the code base were done
• OOo 3.0 Final
  • released mid of October 2008 (at 8 ^th anniversary of OOo - 13 ^th of October)
  • numbers about that release
• OOo 2.4.2
  • released on 28 ^th of October 2008
  • currently the last bug fix release on OOo 2.x code line, were ~25 critical issues were fixed

In January 2009 (the very next days) OOo 3.0.1 will be released. So stay tuned for the first bug fix release on OOo 3.x code line. Also Feature Freeze for OOo 3.1 was done end of December.

What other numbers can be interested for the last year?

• nearly 900 child work spaces (CWS) were integrated in the code lines (duplicate integrations in different code lines aren't counted)
• more than 4300 issues (features, enhancements, bug fixes etc.) were integrated in the code lines (duplicate integrations in different code line aren't counted)
• more than 12750 issues were reported in IssueTracker

What does this mean in detail and according to the past years?

Child Work Spaces (CWS) and integrated issues

894 CWS with 4360 issues were integrated in 2008. 83 CWSs with 741 issues of them include features and enhancements. The full allocation over the months can be seen in the next graphs.

How many CWSe and Issues were integrated in the years before is shown in the next graphs.

I asked myself, why we had so much integrations of CWS and issues in 2005 and also in 2006. The answer I found is, OOo worked in that time frame on bug fixing only. In October 2005 OOo 2.0 was released. Before this release features and bug fixes were done in parallel for a long time. And after the betas a mass of bug fixes had to be done. With OOo 2.0.1 in December 2005 and OOo 2.0.2 in February 2006 more than 3500 fixed issues – mostly bug fixes - were integrated. This rate OOo never reached again. Beside this the release model changed in 2007 with the toggle of Feature release with Bug-Fix releases. So since mid of 2006 the teams are working more and more on integration of new features than in 2005.

Incoming Issues in IssueTracker increased in 2008

The high interest on OOo 3.0 was noticeable also in IssueTracker (the issue tracking system for OOo). The number of issues increased before first Beta in March and was on a high level in Beta phases of OOo 3.0 until the final release in October 08.

In 2007 the duration of incoming issues per month were under 1000 issues. But in 2008 the number increased on nearly the same level as in 2006.

These numbers say that 25% of all reported defects and 52% of all reported features and enhancements aren't addressed until now. In sum more than 3000 issues (~27%) aren't addressed. If this is a good or a bad number, I cannot say. I do not have the comparison with other bigger products until now. But I know that with OOo 3.0.1 and OOo 3.1 the quality will and should be increased. So stay tuned for these releases. As I wrote above OOo 3.0.1 will be out in the very soon.

On the other side more than 50% of all issues are done and 12% are addressed for the very next releases. So the general rate for issue handling isn't bad, I think. But I always know, there are still issues which hinder people on using OOo in their environment. It isn't possible to work on all that issues.

My resume

Because of the mass of releases – more than in the past years – and the big pressure to release OOo 3.0 it was a lot of work for all community teams. In my opinion we, the whole OOo community, did more than in the past years. Perhaps the code contribution in lines of code wasn't as high as in the past years (I haven't checked this by myself), but there were many other things to do, that these releases could be realized in time – nearly in time.

Last week Eric Bachard wrote about the number of contributors to OOo and Jim Parkinson, VP at Sun Microsystems, wrote that Sun will continue to support OOo. Also the contribution of Extensions for OOo started and increased dramatically in 2008. Everybody who want to contribute his/her new feature without build environment of OOo could use this method. And a lot of users/contributors did this.

But we need a lot of more people in all projects on OOo to increase the success of OOo in future. Some people talk about code contribution only. I talk about we need more people in all areas and projects – User Experience, QA, L10N, Development or any other project on OOo – to get dreams fulfilled.

So let 2009 be also a successful year and come to OOo – as community member or as user only.