What does LTS *actually* mean

[Harald Sitter]

On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 6:54 PM, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, February 06, 2014 11:27:02 Harald Sitter wrote:
>> Thanks for the thoughts.
>>
>> As I am currently writing a policy on this matter, currently the
>> characteristics of a Kubuntu LTS seem to be:
>>
>> * Long-term KDE SC backport target (PPA)
>> * Long-term security update target (-security)
>> * Long-term stable update target (-proposed) [stable updates policy
>> applies - ensuring time is not wasted]
>> * Extra permissive stable release update handling while LTS=latest stable
>>
>> Anyone got any final additions/objections?
>
> What does the last one mean in practical terms?  The stable update permissions
> we have are from the tech board, so we can't modify them unilaterally.

tldr: policy creates artificial requirements before being able to do a
SRU that is not a patch release, those requirements are to be ignored
for the first 6 months to facilitate plentiful annoyance fixes in an
LTS release.

Another policy deals with when to do SRUs, it is intended to restrict
SRUs to the most likely to succeed subset as to avoid time waste. I
was thinking that up to 6 months after LTS release a more lax
restriction (alas, permissive was a badly chosen word) should apply
because in practise we usually push more SRUs into LTS after its
release (compared to regular releases anyway).
To reflect this LTS releases should be encouraged to receive plenty of
SRUs the first 6 months, and for that the requirements for
availability of testers and all that should be disregarded during that
period.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kubuntu/Policies#Misc_.28.28NEW.29.29

HS