Please all favors indicate if LTS and support length

[Clive Johnston]

Hi all,

Given that Philip and Scarlett are the current release managers and understand 
the release better than anyone, my vote is with them. If it even counts for 
anything!

Maybe its because I have been more involved with this release, but it does 
feel like there have been some major changes allowed in at the last minute.  
The whole libc6 and MySQL 5.7 transitions being uploaded so close to release 
is extremely worrying for me.

Maybe my understanding is still very weak, but if our packages had to be 
rebuild for any reason, using libc6 we would be swamped with FTBFS.  At the 
moment we just don't have the person power to maintain it, in my opinion. 

At this point we need to focus on building up a strong team, not only for 
future releases but to maintain older releases and our users who still rely on 
them.  I also know that Philip would not make this decision lightly and will 
have put a lot of thought into it. So +1 for 3 years.

Clive

On Tuesday, 19 April 2016 11:22:52 BST Philip Muskovac wrote:
> That is a valid point, but I fear 5 years would simply not work out this
> time. Most of the other Ubuntu flavors also go with 3 years of support
> guarantee.
> If we have more people in 2 years we can go with 5 years for 18.04. But
> then "more" also has to mean "dedicated", as we are talking about being
> bound to the project for another 5 years, no matter what happens.
> The current team does a great job, that's why we're willing to promise 3
> years of support for 16.04 while still supporting 14.04 and the usual
> short term release, but unless the team size increases, supporting
> multiple LTS releases at the same time will not work out in the long run.
> 
> Philip