Will There be a Server 2008 RC2?
Mark Minasi and I were chatting on Saturday about the possibility of a Server 2008 RC2, and I came up with some collections of thoughts on this very question.
You see, for those of us who are writing books on the topic, we have to be very careful about exactly what content on which we focus our effort. Most of my book is complete. But, that content was all written based on Beta 3. Things have changed since then. Not a lot, but enough that an update is necessary prior to the final release.
Here's the issue: I only have enough time to update the book once before it gets released in full, finished, print form. Doing it earlier on pre-release code is always a gamble, in the case where Microsoft does a major feature change between releases. But at the same time, there's a first mover's advantage to getting books published first.
All that being said, here are my thoughts on the possibility of an RC2...
RC0 was released on 9/24. RC1 was released on 12/5. That’s not quite 10 weeks between releases. We’re 12 weeks away from the launch date. For Vista we had an RC2 that was released 4 weeks before RTM. But that was a bug fix release only, as I remember…yes?So, my gut feeling is that we’ve got to be supremely close to “feature complete” with this one. As I’ve heard there are a number of big changes in RC1: GP Preferences, WSV, WGA, others. But there is likely to be some changes relevant to the Vista SP1 release, since they're sharing codebase. At the same time, MS is laser-focused on meeting the Launch date, to the point where in my opnion they'll drop features to make it rather than slip.
Thus, I suspect we may indeed have an RC2. But that RC2 will be dropped mere weeks before RTM, and likely won't include any functional changes. Only bug fixes and code optimizations.
What are your thoughts? Have you heard any news to the contrary? I'm immensely curious to know (as are others, I suspect).
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