When stability is pointless

[Sam Kuper]

Dear all,
I'm grateful for your comments on this thread. I've learned about a few
parts of the Debian system I wasn't aware of before (volatile/sloppy) and
have been pleased to see a range of perspectives, including from upstream of
the distro.

A number of comments missed my main point, which was:

When 'stable' packages don't work, or are inadequately documented, it's a
pain because the upstream developers (who are otherwise often the first port
of call for help and documentation) may no longer support the version of the
software that the stable package installs.

It's this support/usability gap that I feel needs addressing in a more
concerted way when distros take on the commitment of accepting a package.

In my original post, I made some vague suggestions about how that might be
done, and I'd ask any upstream or downstream maintainers reading this to
consider their relationships with their counterparts, and whether
modifications to the package acceptance/maintenance procedures might improve
those relationships and mitigate the gap I've referred to. If so, I'd
encourage you to propose those amendments to procedure, for the community's
consideration.

(And finally, I'm sorry to have taken so long replying - it's been a busy
period for me...)

Many thanks to all who've read or replied to this thread*,

Sam

*Aside from the troll Robert Caruso, who I hope for all our sakes has
finally managed to spell "unsubscribe" and remove himself from the
debian-user list.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20081112/f5a12d28/attachment.html>