Through a long IRC conversation with Bill Nottingham, John Poelstra, Jesse Keating, and Dennis Gilmore, we've greenlit scenario #1 but with a few conditionals.

A) QA signs off as well.
B) We don't conflict with any major Linux distro release and cause mirrors to hate us
C) We find a happy place for go / nogo events for Alpha/Beta

With respect to point C, jlaska, can you attend next week's rel-eng IRC meeting and we can nail that down? (Or, if you've got a better suggestion for time & place, let us know.)

Updated the wiki to reflect the scenario under discussion:
* https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/13/Schedule

Replying to [comment:2 jkeating]:

Through a long IRC conversation with Bill Nottingham, John Poelstra, Jesse Keating, and Dennis Gilmore, we've greenlit scenario #1 but with a few conditionals.

A) QA signs off as well.

While both proposed changes meet my hope of having the same test tasks for each major milestone (Alpha, Beta, GA) ... I'm happy with the scenario#1. Scenario#1 also opens up a bit more room for beta feedback which I don't think is a bad thing.

B) We don't conflict with any major Linux distro release and cause mirrors to hate us
C) We find a happy place for go / nogo events for Alpha/Beta

I like the idea of moving the go/nogo event to the Wednesday, and the content sync starts on Thursday. The IRC thread also points out a need to clarify the goal of the go/nogo meeting ... I think we'd all benefit from adding some context around the meeting.

I'll need to work back with the team to make sure our testing tasks are completed in time for the meeting.

Executive Summary: We are blocked on setting a final date until we have more information from the mirrors.

Jesse and I have talked a little more on #fedora-devel and researched a few other things. Here is a current status:

1. We are waiting for feedback on logistics list to set the Final Go/No-Go meeting date--http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/logistics/2009-November/000281.html
   • This should not affect concluding on the schedule and sending it on to FESCo
2. Jesse raised the issue of colliding with other releases on the mirrors if Fedora releases close to the same time. We have a current conflict with Ubuntu's release date. It is hard to know how seriously we should consider this in light of our historical schedule performance since Fedora 8 being that we are always 2 weeks or more late on our originally scheduled release date. I would like to think that lucky Fedora 13 will be the release we break that but it's hard to know. To get more information on the severity of this problem I started a post on fedora-infrastructure list--https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-November/msg00159.html
   • This item needs to be closed before moving on to FESCo because it could change our final GA date by one week or two. My personal suggestion would be to move the Fedora schedule out by one week to avoid the conflict with Ubuntu. It still conflicts with SUSE, but Matt D suggest this shouldn't be a problem.
3. I will also start the start the same thread on mirror-list-d once I get approved there
4. I also started a thread on the fedora-desktop-list to get feedback on the schedule from the Desktop team. No specific changes have been suggested by the desktop team. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2009-November/msg00125.html

RE: Items 1-4 above. 2-4 have been resolved with today's meeting where the decision was made to add two weeks to the Fedora 13 schedule.

Item 1 is still open, hoping to get feedback from Paul Frields when he returns.

I've created a ticket with FESCo to review and approve the Fedora 13 schedule.
https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/281

In the associated FESCo ticket Kevin Kofler asks what a shorter schedule by two weeks would look like.

My response:

http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/schedules/f-13-draft/f-13-two-weeks-
early.html

This would be less favorable considering where feature freeze lands and
how soon the Alpha would be. It might also possibly be the shortest
release in Fedora's history.

This was done I do believe. Please re-open if not.