Getting new packages into Ubuntu

[Jeremy Bicha]

On 10 October 2011 13:52, Sebastien Bacher <seb128 at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Le lundi 10 octobre 2011 à 13:15 -0400, Scott Kitterman a écrit :
>> I understand what you're saying.  It's not a distro I would use.
>
> Ok, fair enough, let's agree that we disagree then. Just one question
> then, do you consider a feature (i.e a good thing) that upstreams have
> to get "locked" in our 6 months cycle or do you think that's something
> we should aim at fixing in some way?
>
> Let's take a simple example, we got a new login manager (lightdm) this
> cycle, from reading blogs some users who miss having a graphical tool to
> tweak the config of their login screen started hacking on an utility
> called "simple-lightdm-manager", that started too late to get in Oneiric
> though and the quality might not be archive ready. How do you recommend
> we solve the issue that some users might be interested to get that sort
> of utility and use them on Oneiric? If upstream is adding features as
> time permit and is adding an option to pick the greeter to use in 2
> weeks which should Ubuntu users need to wait 6 months and the lts to get
> their hands on it?

Instead of a new repository (extras or PPAs or whatever), why don't we
use backports more to get new packages into the stable releases?
Firefox and Chromium, though special, have at least opened the door
more to stable updates that aren't just bug fixes.

Personally, I've never been fully convinced of the value of the extras
repository....which hasn't really resulted in a flood of great apps
yet. Perhaps that's because of all the restrictions and the fact that
there are several other ways to get apps into Ubuntu.

Jeremy Bicha