Hi all,

It's become clear to me that the release manager doesn't have the power to do much in the project. Since last Summer I've avoided using the title for the simple reason that other people seem to resent the idea of titles, and I had hoped that actions would speak for themselves.

Since then, the idea of having a roadmap has met more opposition that I expected on two occasions, and several people have said that they'd ignore it anyway. Most of what I do these days seems to be PR and developer relations (massaging egos after other people unconsciously piss people off). I can do both of those without the title. In fact, given that we have a de facto maintainer already, who handles releases and controls pretty tightly what gets checked into the tree, the role doesn't have much meaning.

So we need to talk about what the role of release manager means to the project. The last time I asked someone what exactly release manager means, I was told that it was a nice title, and I should enjoy having it. If it's decided that it's just a title, then someone else can have it. But if we agree that the release manager has a certain role to play, it should be well defined.

Cheers, Dave.