doc: note validation and timeline required for stables

If a stable branch for a specific DPDK release is to proceed,
along with needing a maintainer, there should also be commitment
from major contributors for validation of the releases.

Also, as decided in the March 27th techboard, to facilitate user
planning, a release should be designated as a stable release
no later than 1 month after it's initial master release.

Signed-off-by: Kevin Traynor <ktraynor@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org>
Acked-by: Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net>

diff --git a/doc/guides/contributing/stable.rst b/doc/guides/contributing/stable.rst
index 4214103..b63cd42 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/guides/contributing/stable.rst
+++ b/doc/guides/contributing/stable.rst
@@ -26,7 +26,9 @@ Stable Releases
 ---------------
 
 Any major release of DPDK can be designated as a Stable Release if a
-maintainer volunteers to maintain it.
+maintainer volunteers to maintain it and there is a commitment from major
+contributors to validate it before releases. If a release is to be designated
+as a Stable Release, it should be done by 1 month after the master release.
 
 A Stable Release is used to backport fixes from an ``N`` release back to an
 ``N-1`` release, for example, from 16.11 to 16.07.