reflecting on first UDS session on "rolling releases"

[Allison Randal]

On 03/06/2013 07:51 AM, Anca Emanuel wrote:
> [quote]As the conversation runs on, these "enthusiasts" appear to be a smaller
> and smaller subset of the Ubuntu user base.[/quote]
> 
> You will be surprised how many people prefer an rolling release.
> 
> Think a bit: that will be the next LTS, so it need to be stable every
> day, and extra for the LTS release day.

They may want the fresher software, yes. But if the rolling un-release
is too bleeding-edge, floods them with untested/unstable updates,
crashes regularly, randomly breaks their apps because the API carpet was
yanked out from under them, etc, then really, they won't be able to use it.

We effectively have two possible alternate futures on the table:

A) The "rolling release" is essentially a development archive for the
next LTS, and not intended for general use.

B) It is a real rolling release, with high enough quality that we
recommend it for anyone and everyone to use.


The only version of reality we can deliver tomorrow is (A). But (B) is
possible with 6 months of intensely hard work, or a year of moderately
hard work.

It's not yet clear if (A) or (B) is the ultimate goal, they're still
suspended as a quantum superposition of equally possible futures. But,
the engineering plans to achieve (A) or (B) look very different.

Allison