How we managed 49 monthly releases

This post details GitLab's adoption of a strict monthly release cycle, inspired by Ubuntu and GNOME. It explains the rationale behind time-based releases for distributed software, the benefits of monthly cycles for communication and rapid feedback, and the Agile practice of team members picking tasks from a pool. The role of Release Manager is rotated monthly to avoid single points of failure and encourage process improvement. The release process involves creating release candidates, QA, deployment to GitLab.com, and preparing packages and blog posts. Post-release, a regression issue is used to track and fix bugs, with unscheduled patch releases for critical issues. The post argues that a stable release schedule builds trust and indicates a healthy, actively developed open-source project.