Reason for 9 month period between v4 and v5 forks

Question

From this question it is clear that the v4 hard fork was advanced to January 2016 (from March 2016) so that RingCT could be activated sooner. The v5 hard fork scheduling (for September 2016) was unaffected.

Aside from the general convention of aiming for March and September hard forks is there any reason why the v5 fork could also not happen sooner?

RingCT code was released with Monero v0.10.0 - Wolfram Warptangent several months ago and Monero users, are excited about improved privacy features. Why is there a need to wait until September to enforce RingCT network wide?

If convention is the primary reason why not activate v5 in March 2016 and resume the conventional fork schedule after that? Since RingCT is working on testnet today, if January 2016 until March 2016 not long enough of a (main-net) testing period before RingCT is enforced?

Answer 1

Aside from the general convention of aiming for March and September hard forks is there any reason why the v5 fork could also not happen sooner?

RingCT is a significant protocol change involving complex cryptography. Sticking to the original date increases the time to test this relatively novel technology.

RingCT code was released with Monero v0.10.0 - Wolfram Warptangent several months ago and Monero users, are excited about improved privacy features. Why is there a need to wait until September to enforce RingCT network wide?

While RingCT will not be enforced until September, RingCT transactions can be performed during this phase. Indeed, I think any new wallet software will default to RingCT transactions - so the only people that would be making old-style transactions are those using old software. So people can use RingCT in the interim.

If convention is the primary reason why not activate v5 in March 2016 and resume the conventional fork schedule after that? Since RingCT is working on testnet today, if January 2016 until March 2016 not long enough of a (main-net) testing period before RingCT is enforced?

3 months can go by extremely fast in an open-sourced, volunteer driven project. And as I mentioned above, RingCT isn't enforced, but its also allowable.