Subversion 1.5: A case study in open source release mismanagement

In June 2008, the Subversion development team released Subversion 1.5.0. This release contained a number of new features, but arrived only after a long and difficult development, test and release cycle. This protracted process confused and frustrated both users and developers. In this paper, we discuss the events which led to this breakdown, how the release process is being improved, and what lessons other open source projects can learn from the Subversion community's mistakes.