The [creativecommons.org] site is our main website, which has significant traffic (.5m/month).

Because the site has many internal components that must inter-operate correctly for the site to function, and also due to the traffic load, the site must be carefully updated in a coordinated way. We have developed a weekly release schedule with different stages for development, localization, and QA, which you can read about below.

Release Schedule

All times in Pacific Time (GMT-8 or GMT-7, depending on daylight savings).

The release schedule repeats these stages weekly:

Development

Beginning with the Tuesday morning push, the source tree is re-opened for changes. Approved patches (changes) may be committed until the tree closes on Thursday night.

String Freeze

At the end of Thursday the source tree enters a string freeze. This means that no changes are allowed which would modify or add strings marked for localization. This allows our translators 3 full days (including the weekend) to work on translations. Exceptions to the string freeze are at the discretion of the module owner, but generally not granted.

Full Freeze

On Sunday night the source tree is locked down, and no changes are allowed. This gives us one day where we can QA the site before releasing it to production on Tuesday morning

Note that changes to the production site happen only on Tuesday mornings. No changes are pushed to the live site at any other time, with the exception of emergency situations or any pre-approved releases (at the discretion of the module owner).