What does LTS *actually* mean

[Harald Sitter]

On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 8:33 PM, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> wrote:
> On Friday, February 07, 2014 09:41:29 Harald Sitter wrote:
>> 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
>
> OK.  How about "additional emphasis on" instead of "extra permissive"?  We
> can't be more permissive than the SRU team rules allow without additional
> exceptions from the tech board.

Sure. Those bullet points are not the final version, hence the wording
is le bad :)

HS