That sounds great to me, as it ticks all the boxes: it’s simple and has instant visability. It would also be easy to set up and maintain (I, for one, would be happy volunteer to do just that).
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I am happy you liked my idea 
It was inspired by what Lawrence37 mentioned in post #3 about Gimp. I believe we can take advantage of their example on how they handled the situation.
On gimp.org they make sure they post something on their news-feed every other month or so, always including the date. This is visible immediately, so the visitor can know that the project is active without any clicking or scrolling (just some minor swiping on a smartphone). This is not the case with the Rawtherapee homepage, where the “Latest news” in the beginning do not include a date, and the detailed field is all the way down.
I hope that such an adjustment on the website and a small news-feed will be easy to make and maintain. I believe it could be something like: Updates on our developer's version, read more here <link> . This way it would communicate RT’s activity more effectively to current and possible future users.
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Why don’t you give the writing a go?
Thanks for the suggestion @Zahtar. I hate to be negative, but I don’t think that will be enough to show how active the project is. I just had a look through the GIMP news and see they have been making new announcements regularly long before they fixed the public perception. The news also included the frequent development releases (2.9.*). I reread what they had to say about the situation and this part stood out. From GIMP and GEGL in 2019 - GIMP :
Between 2012 and 2018 (v2.8 and v2.10 releases respectively), we worked hard and added a ton of improvements and new features, we demoed them on social networks, mentioned them in annual reports etc., and yet we kept hearing how GIMP was dead because those changes were not in any stable releases. The same thing was happening before in the four years between v2.6 and v2.8.
- “Wilbur” 2020-01-04
As they wrote, I think the only thing that will really work is to increase the frequency of releases.
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Well researched, @Lawrence37, and very interesting. It would seem that increasing the frequency of releases would certainly be the single most effective solution — after all, I suspect it would be extremely difficult for anyone to conclude a project dead when the the latest and greatest version has just been anounced.
A bit of extra promotion (such as @Zahtar’s idea, a blog, or a newsletter, for example) certainly wouldn’t hurt, though, do you think? Maybe I could give it a whirl? I could put something together and we could all see what we think; if it doesn’t work out or no one likes it, there’s no obligation to use it and we certainly haven’t lost anything (I’d just end up with an intetesting article to post on my website). 
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Yes, it wouldn’t hurt. What topic do you have in mind?
For my part, given my age (the future is behind me), I would be in favor of increasing the frequency of releases. By combining 2 things:
- a) time : 1 year seems a lot to me, 6 to 9 months seems more relevant to me.
- b) novelty: if for example a new functionality is validated, why wait?
All the ideas for promoting seem interesting to me. Of course there is the official channel - the Rawtherapee site - but this means of communication is limited, because it is difficult (?) for example to talk about versions currently being developed (Pull Request). The advantage of another media: 2nd site, blog, newsletter, etc., allows us to overcome this institutional conformism and broadens the range of people who want or can try.
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oh, I share this feeling 
This is, what I had in mind (including important bug fixes). E.g. we had to wait a while until 5.9. to be able to open cr3 raws, whereas in dev version it was implemented. Would this part had been released earlier, it wouldn’t had been necessary to struggle with dng conversion on linux.
A new release brings advantages to the user (even if it’s a small one) and shows life signs.
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I was personally thinking of general information around what’s currently being worked on, what the next release is likely to include, general news and updates… that sort of thing. As to the practicalities, I was thinking of a simple page on the main website in a typical diary (blog) format maybe? But whatever is most practical for the developers and useful to users, really.
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Sounds good @martbetz. A list of things in the 5.10 release is probably the best topic to focus on right now. The feature set is basically frozen, and the remaining additions (bug fixes, translations, etc.) are about to be finalized too. I can’t comment on the possibility of a blog because I haven’t contributed anything to the website aside from some words for one news article.
Is that a typo or a misunderstanding? CR3 support first appeared in 5.8 which was released less than 5 months after 5.7.
It didn’t fully support CR3 metadata as I recall, which meant lenses weren’t automatically recognized, etc.
5.9 didn’t change anything for CR3 files, so it’s not that. Kurt did write that it was about opening CR3s.
I must apologize. I just remembered that “something did not work” and typed before sorting my thoughts.
It was @lphilpot who recalled correctly. I used dynamic profiles, which “did not work” without the metadata.
Iphilpot: may I ask you next time when I need access to my memory?
… at your own risk, yes.
I see. The CR3 metadata handling was merged to the development version just under 6 months ago and will be in the 5.10 release, so 6 to 7 months if things go according to plan. @Kurt, what would your answer be to my question about the desired release frequency?
Would it be possible to embed a page from GitHub directly onto RT webpage?
I think that the milestones page would be perfect. It shows a percent bar as well as last updated date.
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Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast (Goethe, Faust)
As a user I think like jdc:
As a person who has been involved in release processes for years:
A release means work(*), and is it really necessary to release each functionality individually?
Individually: an important bugfix. Or a really important update to the functionality (eg cr3 metadata 
)
Otherwise: +/- once per year:
+/- means:
let’s say regular release in january, you have n features.
if you can predict in October, feature n+1 cannot be finished until January: way wait?
if you can predict that in January that in February feature n+1 would be finished: wait until February.
I would see “once per year” not so closely.
(*)I don’t know how much work it is for RawTherapee, so the decision is up to you.
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That “… will… break processing profile backward compatibility” message for 6.0 still sends a shudder down my spine, though. 
That is, if I understand it correctly, of course; my understanding being that my current collection of PP3s will either not work at all with 6.0 or they will work, but they won’t provide identical results.
That is my understanding. It’s not that it will necessarily be different, it’s just that the developers will be no longer be constrained by maintaining backwards compatibility at the expense of progress.
@martbetz If you decide to write something about 5.10, the list of new features in the release notes may be helpful: RawTherapee/RELEASE_NOTES.txt at 6967de2f89d5b49b5818f4afa27aa0f941b4028f · Beep6581/RawTherapee · GitHub
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