Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

[Marc Haber <mh+debian-project@zugschlus.de>]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 11:51:35AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Jul 2009, Marc Haber wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 10:37:46AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > > 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”.
> > 
> > What kind of synergy could Debian get from Ubuntu which it couldn't
> > get in the past? I surely haven't seen any in the past.
> 
> As you might have noticed, Ubuntu is used by lots of people and 
> they start having some influence on upstream projects. Those projects do
> some effort to ensure that Ubuntu has a good version of their software
> (sometimes by using a version that does not come from Debian sid).
> 
> If Ubuntu and Debian used the same version, the incentive would be even
> bigger to publish a really good version because it's going to be used
> very widely in the next 3 years.
> 
> Also in many cases, Ubuntu and Debian teams can't fully collaborate
> because they do not target the same upstream version, freezing at the same
> time should make it possible to achieve this goal.

I still see that Ubuntu gets more benefit from that decision. Also,
the release team's stunning silence to questions asked about their
decisions makes me wonder.

> > > We'll keep our user base
> > 
> > That's what I doubt. Ubuntu LTS will be better than Debian stable in
> > all aspects, why should anybody continue using Debian stable?
> 
> Why are you using Debian and not Ubuntu?

Because I'm a dinosaur who doesn't like changing things.

> I'm also quite convinced that by doing better communication/marketing
> that explains what we are, we can continue to attract new users and new
> developers.

We have always sucked at communicating. The timed freeze issue is a
good example for that.

Greetings
Marc

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