Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 03:17:27PM +0200, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl wrote:
> >> If you don't like that, don't shoot the messenger, because they
> >> might get sick of being shooten at at every occasion; thanks.
> > I think an important critic in this thread is the way the message was
> > brought: DD's like myself are learning of this decision from a press
> > release. Affected teams haven't been asked or even informed beforehand.
> > This is definitely something that the 'messenger' should have considered
> > before deciding to take this route to announce the plan, don't you think?
> Please try to put yourself in our (the press teams) place:
> * In the release teams keynote a major change is announced
> * It is clear, that the topic will be picked up by journalists
I wonder why this is clear, exactly - I didn't notice journalists in the
room during the talk, and I doubt they're watching the DebConf video feed in
realtime. Don't you think there was time here to have a developer
announcement + discussion first, without worrying about the press covering
it before we'd even posted to d-d-a?
One of the reasons I heard mentioned here at DebConf for putting out a press
release was to give our *users* as much warning as possible that the release
cycle would be different, so that they could plan accordingly. I think this
was a good reason for doing a press release soon; I don't think it was
urgent to have it happen immediately, and I think having it happen this way
has had an unfortunate effect on the developer discussion process.
(Which is still an important and necessary process, even if some people
currently feel the release team is shoving this decision down their throats
- if there are problems with the proposed plan, we can only fix those and
make the next Debian release as great as possible by discussing them
respectfully and working together to solve them.)
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
Reply to: