On Bugs and Linux Quality

[Null Ack]

Daniel with respect, I did not mean to present that the solution to
improving the quality of GNU/Linux is for centralised control.

However, people are in control of aspects of Linux - such as release
decisions about key sub systems, or release decisions as it relates to
Distros. These decision makers have the power to conform, or not to conform
as some unfortunately choose, to decades old principles to do with what
consitutes an alpha, beta or production release.

Clearly, there are allot of problems when parties who are in control declare
a release as stable when its not. With the kernel, I gave the example where
Andrew Morton shared with us that he often see's regression bugs go without
fixes, he see's developers ignore bug reports. There is other examples too
in other key sub systems of just about any Linux distro. Take for example,
all the problems with X releases and how most recently a new release of X
was made with a blocker bug and other serious bugs.

If more focus and discipline was put into what constitutes a production
release I think that would be a very good direction to take. Who cares if
there is more release candidates for kernels or more betas for X, if its not
ready its not ready. Some bugs can be tricky for a developer to replicate
and resolve. Its human nature not to see the severity the same way with an
issue if it's not happening on your machine.

I dont see proper release management stifling any freedoms in FOSS projects.
It just means having a proper quality standard before bits are declared
stable and ready for production. I greatly enjoy Ubuntu, over all other
distro's Ive tried (Arch, OpenSuse, Fedora) but I am certainly not the only
person Ive seen sharing their views that arbitary time based releases arent
condusive to good software.
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