What's wrong with Ubuntu's policy?

[Martin Owens]

Hey Markus,

> Well, xorg is based on (or part of) X, which is about 20 years old. X  
> was considered to be "mature" for some time, and severly behind a few  
> years later. Do you really think there is something like a "maturity"  
> which can be reached? If not after 20 years, how long does it take?  
> 30 years, 50 years? Similar facts apply for the other packages you  
> mentioned.

It's true that xorg is old, but age is not maturity (not even in
people). While the world moved on, the x window system saw reductions in
it's maturity in modern systems because of project stagnation. It's not
until very recently that xorg has been pushed to achieve the maturity it
badly needed (thanks Bryce & team).

> My strong feeling is, reaching maturity is almost like stopping  
> development, which shouldn't happen. It looks like the key to success  
> is to reach a good user experience in constant development, without  
> ever reaching "task done".

Maturity isn't about releases, I feel it more about keeping up with
integration, flexibility and bug fixes, all those none featured things
that are so important to a nice stable system. Some parts of our systems
have never been integrated very well (configs), some are just confusing
as hell (audio) whilst others have bit rotted over time (xorg).

So you don't need to stop development, you just need to make sure that
every sub-system is keeping pace and developing more flexible, modular
and easier designs over time.

Perhaps others have a different view of maturity though. thoughts?

Regards, Martin Owens