This is actually great news on progress but is I think it is wrongly interpretted, so I'm throwing some caution to the wind in case people get too excited and think they might be let down again at a later stage. Actually Chris states he is doing a trial, depending on whether it works or not he will submit to the release tracker. So there are no conclusions yet and nothing has been submitted.

Once in the tracker it will probably have to go through some testing (that's what is for), chances of getting through first time are 50/50 generally... I would say you are looking at a minimum of one month for release even if everything goes to plan (nb this is total speculation from my part).

Any news of progress though is really excellent news :).

> I for one dont understand how anything fails in the release tracker.

http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Products/Development/ProjectReleaseTracking/tabid/997/Default.aspx

If you go to the release tracker and have a look at the projects that have failed you will hopefully understand that sometimes really obvious things get missed which will cause serious issues upon release, so it is great to have a third or even forth pair of eyes (for instance we have security experts that will examine the code for issues which might not be immediately obvious). So have a look, it is for all to see and be enlightened, I think the dogs and ponys are doing us a great free service and I very much appreciate their time ;).

Different project leaders do projects in different ways so it's great to have some form of standard testing. Anyway if everything is reasonably OK there will be nothing to worry about as you say, proof of pudding though is in the eating.

That is correct - theoretically. But in reality, there is a difference, if a developer tests his own product vs. tests by 3rd party experts, who got some experience in detecting pitfalls and have special focus on dedicated fields of experience, e.g. packaging, localisability, XHTML compliance or security. Extensions have to pass the release tracker, in order that the Core Team can guarantee assertions we made for the DNN package. Functional and usability tests are executed to validate the basic functionality of the module, any other issues found are reported back to the team lead, who decides whether the team wants to release anyway or wants to fix and resubmit. In summary, there is no blame for the team, if the module fails in the tracker, the only measure is the outcome - modules and providers, the teams can be proud of!