On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 04:12:58AM +0200, Frans Pop wrote: > On Wednesday 29 July 2009, Meike Reichle wrote: > > The Debian project has decided to adopt a new policy of time-based > > development freezes for future releases, on a two-year cycle. > Disappointing to see such an announcement without any prior discussion on > d-project, d-devel or d-vote.
Sure makes the dicussion harder and more confrontational, if nothing else. Are we trying to make people long for the days of [0]? [0] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/03/msg00012.html > Some explanation of how and by who this > decision was reached would be appreciated. For one, it'd be fascinating to know why it's a two year cycle starting about one year from the last release instead of about two. I'm presuming the answer is "It'd be awkward for Ubuntu to sync with, given their last LTS release was early 2008 and they've kind-of promised two year cycles". I'm not seeing why a freeze anywhere in March-July in even years wouldn't suffice for both issues though. For two, it means squeeze is getting a ten month development phase (mid Feb to sometime in Dec), of which five-and-a-half months have already gone. So, hey, downhill run with only, uh, 1100-odd RC bugs to fix. We've never had that many RC bugs to fix before, but we had about 600 nine-months before lenny released, and I guess about 400 when lenny froze this time last year. For three, what happened to getting the firmware issue resolved early in squeeze's cycle [1]? It's evidently no longer early in squeeze's cycle, so maybe I just somehow missed the decision on that... [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2009/05/msg00000.html As far as making decisions at debconf (or irc) rather than via the lists goes, I read an article about PowerPoint use in the military [2] that strikes me as kinda parallel: having time to look over these proposals calmly first rather than having to immediately react seems generally helpful. [2] http://www.afji.com/2009/07/4061641 And, umm, presuming Debian manages a five month freeze (ie, 1.5 months less than lenny's), and it releases in April, as presumably does Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (leisuresuit lorikeet?), why bother running Debian stable? Ubuntu comes with paid, full-time security support; it'll have pretty much everything Debian does, and probably a bit more; its popularity will probably provide better hardware support including preinstalled systems in some cases... And hey, for machines still running etch, it'll probably be just as easy to upgrade to Ubuntu as it would be to skip lenny and go to squeeze. Someone remind me why it'll be worth caring about stable? Cheers, aj -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
