Hello, On ketvirtadienis 30 Liepa 2009 11:37:46 Raphael Hertzog wrote: > I don't mind who changes the date for the other but I really don't agree > that doing it is only for Ubuntu's advantage. Nobody in Debian would have > taken such a decision, we are Debian developers and have no interest in > helping only Ubuntu. > > What we're speaking of is synergy between both distributions. You know the > it's the principle behind “the combination of both is worth more that the > sum of individual parts”. Debian might not bleed too much in terms of existing users, but it might not attract more new ones. You fail to sees that Ubuntu has a huge marketing machine behind it which will overshadow Debian. And why wouldn't they? They make (most?) money from LTS which is in fact aimed at corporate workstations and servers - the majority user base of Debian stable users. Since Ubuntu will do their best on this front so it might make sense to avoid this disadvantage (since we objectively can't do better in marketing). What is more, we are indeed forgetting that Ubuntu releases each 6 months. Whenever Debian freezes, it already benefits some Ubuntu release(s) (and vice versa). So this is just a proof that this freeze date is aimed specially at Ubuntu LTS. Actually, I don't see much wrong with that (despite concerns I expressed above) and this could very well be a future goal (for Dec 2011). But no, Debian has (for some unknown reason) to do this now (Dec 2009) and in my humble opinion mess up developers' plans (which might result in demotivating them), end up in long freeze due to huge number of RC bugs, planned but not done/rushed transitions (demotivated people, less work done) and finally release in the end of 2010 with old software. In addition, now Debian puts more burden on security team and everyone requiring to support both lenny and squeeze of their packages which would have been plain unnecessary if the next release date would not be rushed and so badly communicated (which for some reason is not admitted either). So let's just freeze late in the early/middle spring of 2010 this time and aim for Dec 2011 freeze next time. If you disagree with that, please enlighten me why Debian needs to rush _this time_. If synchronization is so badly wanted for the next Debian release, why not to synchronize with Ubuntu 10.10 (as an experiment)? By the way, why isn't it obvious that Debian developers _want_ to be informed about important decisions in advance, not from the press *after* the fact or any other source outside the project? > > We are not only major supplier to Ubuntu, we have our end customers > > ourselves. I'd prefer that it stayed that way. > > The synchronization with Ubuntu is not going to remove our identity. > We'll keep our user base and the possible improvements in both > distributions will help us do better in the competition with other > operating systems (proprietary or not). Synchronization will not remove Debian identity. However, what's badly needed here is *official* position about Debian vs. Ubuntu relationship. Currently, there is absolutely no clarity about that (some hints are coming only from Ubuntu side which is frustrating). It is obvious to anybody that Dec 2009 was chosen to accommodate Ubuntu LTS release cycle, yet any official announcement failed to mention that (is Debian afraid of it?). On the other hand, Mark Shuttleworth said this openly (which means, he thinks it is good for Ubuntu). Let's just make this relationship clear one day. Everybody would benefit from that even if they do not like it. -- Modestas Vainius <modestas@vainius.eu>
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