Let's Discuss Interim Releases (and a Rolling Release)

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Jonathan Riddell wrote on 28/02/13 16:49:
> 
> Along with no UDS this feels like a further move away from being a 
> community project for Ubuntu.
> 
> After much time lobbying KDE (and other upstreams) to move to 6 
> monthly releases that has been working nicely for some years but if
> we lose that cadance we will be in danger of losing a lot of what
> makes this work well.
> 
> ...

A six-monthly cadence may have been good compared with what KDE was
doing previously, I don't know. But that does not mean it is the best
approach in general.

The idea of synchronized cadences dates from the days when it was
assumed that a "distribution" was a scalable way to provide all the
software that millions of people would want to use -- from the kernel
all the way up to the Kairo game. That turned out not to be true.

And even if it had been true, the optimal release cycle for a game, a
magazine app, a Web browser trying to push the standards envelope, a
Twitter client trying to stay ahead of API changes, an office suite
aiming for compatibility with a recent proprietary office suite, a
utility for controlling a recently-released hardware device, and a
base operating system, are all likely to be different. Why would
anyone expect them to be the same? Especially on a mobile platform
where many apps are intended for brief lifetimes, such as an
exhibition, conference, festival, sporting event, or magazine issue.

- -- 
mpt

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with undefined - http://www.enigmail.net/

iEYEARECAAYFAlEwoPwACgkQ6PUxNfU6ecoupgCdHK2TZHnac/wtf6VpRiVqjwNK
B0UAn14dprWJ9fDNNM7mgyDRSnTje0Cj
=ih/s
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----