Release management thoughts for Dapper Drake

[Ivan Krstic]

Scott James Remnant wrote:
> And I still think it's a bad idea; we've built up our reputation and
> user-base on the idea of having 6-monthly releases of the latest
> software -- and to suddenly not do that for a release seems like a
> mistake to me.

This is the first thing that came to my mind, as well. Even if the
importance of getting Ubuntu into the enterprise is taken into account,
we need to recognize that almost all of the existing userbase that
launched Ubuntu into distro stardom is composed of personal users;
denying them the fresh software they've come to expect purely on account
of enterprise potential doesn't strike me as a very community-oriented
decision.

There are alternatives, though. Why not extend the Dapper release cycle
by a month? We can hold on to the same cycle schedule as for normal
6-month releases, and just use the extra time for bugfixes and testing.
In fact, Dapper 'regular' can be released on the standard 6-month cycle,
but with a warning that says that the release will go 'enterprise-ready'
in another month following the regular release. Voila: our personal
users are happy to have a release with the same level of stability as
hoary and warty in 6 months, and our enterprise users wait another month
and get that much extra stability and reliability. As far as I see, this
wouldn't noticeably interfere with the Dapper+1 release schedule,
because the amount of work involved in the 'enterprise month' phase
would be very, very small. Is this an option?

-- 
Ivan Krstic <krstic at hcs.harvard.edu> | 0x147C722D