Chapter 9 of Teaching Open Source is titled, "Release Early, Release Often." The chapter is short, only a page long. however, it describes one of the most important principles of open source software. Developers should release new versions of their software in small increments. This means that there is less that can go wrong with new releases. When there are inevitable bugs and broken code upon releases, the problems should be easier to find and fix since there are few changes since the last version. Releasing early and often also shows that there is progress being made on development. Working on one big release and not releasing any updates may make the project appear to be dead. Releasing often keeps users and contributors engaged and interested in the project.
Release early and often works well as a principle in the agile development cycle. Releasing incremental updates is much more engaging with the community than the waterfall method and its large, all encompassing releases. After all, keeping the community engaged is an important part of open source development.
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