Is there a published Zorin Release Roadmap?

[freddellmeister]

Like prel timeline plans for adoption of Ubuntu 22 LTS
Any other milestones you would like to share/incorporate?

[Aravisian]

The ZorinGroup follows a policy of "Release When Ready."

Perspectives matter, since it really underscores where different people may need to prioritize.
To the ZorinGroup - they are Two Developers that are responsible for all editions and variants of Zorin OS and Zorin Products including Zorin Grid and Applications.
It's like fluid dynamics in Physics: Having just two people increases the pressure.
Minimizing pressure becomes pretty important, just to keep Wits and Sanity about you, much less to prevent feeling the urge to abandon a project (which is pretty common in Linux, sadly).
Having a Pro Edition helps to reduce this pressure, by ensuring that the developers get paid for their work.

From the Zorin OS users perspective, they often have plans or goals and need to know if Zorin OS can help meet those demands. Some users are even under pressure of their own from a Boss or other deadline, requiring that they have a Set Plan that shows how they intend to achieve desired results.
A good example of this would be the implementation of Zorin Grid, knowing release dates in order to plan the upgrades of all office computers, knowing when they can expect Direct Upgrade option and so on.

In my own experience (anecdotal evidence), I have noticed that informed people are more forgiving people. If you have a boss that is very strict about Punctuality and deadlines, informing the boss that you are going to be late is still far more likely to get forgiveness for being late than feeling anxiety about notifying the boss of lateness and just showing up late, is.
It makes sense that the anxiety would lead people to avoid that pressure of letting someone know that they are going to be late.
But it works out a lot better to notify, than not to.

Notification gives people something that they can work with, even it it means adjusting a plan. Knowing that they need to and how to adjust a plan counts for much more than not knowing what is going on.
Humans, in general, intensely dislike being left in the dark. Bad news is better than no news.
This applies to a developer in just the same way: If a developer is unsure of if or when they can release a product - that is that same uncertainty and they intensely dislike it. Even if it is by their own hand.

What We Can Do to Help:

• Use the search function to see if your question has been asked and answered before

• Be Patient. Within three weeks of the release of Zorin OS 16... Users were already asking about and for the release of Zorin OS 17. Keep expectations and deadlines reasonable.

• Choose Zorin OS Pro. Funding the project may help enable hiring of more developers and also of hiring P.R. management that can handle roadmaps, feature request queries and so on.

• Contribute. For many of this, this means helping other users on the forum by addressing help requests. The less the ZorinGroup needs to address direct help requests and stay standing in one place, the more they can devote to future development. This one can be pretty important; the more users that assist on this forum, rather than just a few, the more time is distributed among the many to focus on tasks at hand.
  The member benefits from this by greatly expanding their familiarity and knowledge of Linux, becoming more efficient and adept with Linux on their own machine - as a bonus.

• Use Constructive pressure. Pressure is not always a bad thing and it is easier to manage when it is supportive and encouraging.

I also believe rather strongly that ZorinGroup needs a Roadmap of development, that users can readily access and make note of. It may not be perfect and there may even be delays (e.g. Direct Upgrade), but it saves the Initial asking of the question and feeling left in the dark. To use the Direct Upgrade example; Currently Zorin OS users feel like they are waiting for it, rather than feeling like they are waiting and unsure if they are waiting for nothing.