9.10 is a black eye for Ubuntu - suggestion for the future

[Avi Greenbury]

thomas <valhalla2100 at comcast.net> wrote:
> All of the developers and people responsible for releasing Ubuntu
> should watch a series of old commercials about wine, which featured
> orson welles.  The most famous part of these was the tag line of
> "No Wine before it's time". 
> 
> Each developer should write a version which states the following:
> "No Software before it's time" in bold letter and paste it on the top
> of their monitors and look at it before they released anything beyond
> beta or development versions.

This is exactly the approach that Debian is derided (and praised in
equal measure) for, and ISTR a change from that was one of the founding
tenets of Ubuntu. IIRC, there was actually some reasonable discussion
on Slashdot (well, reasonable for /.) when Debian announced a switch to
timetabled releases.

Having ready-based releases is great for stability but atrocious for
getting anything bigger than an individual to buy into. Businesses need
to know the lifetime of a piece of software they intend to deploy in
order to compare with the competition and timetable a tender for the
replacement.

Timetabled releases are _hard_ but they're also quite necessary for
anything interested in commercial applications.

--
Avi Greenbury
http://aviswebsite.co.uk ;)
http://aviswebsite.co.uk/asking-questions