On Tuesday 2008 December 30 12:30:40 Barclay, Daniel wrote:
However, when you're releasing N thousand changes every 18 months or so,
it's arguable that maybe you should be releasing N/2 thousand changes every
9 or 10 months.
Bah. I think that 18 months is a fine amount of time between stable OS
versions. Ubuntu's releases come out half-baked 2 out of 3 times anyway, so
we only get a really stable release from them every 18 months. :P Microsoft
will spend 18 months just *talking* about the release of their next OS, and
longer to actually get it out the door, and it's *never* stable on day 1. :P
There are downsides to rotating stable more often, too. Either Debian has to
support more releases simultaneously or releases fall out of support more
often and the users are forced to upgrade if they want to continue to receive
security fixes.
Perhaps it's just because it's happening right now, but I think the biggest
problem with Debian's current release process is how disruptive a freeze is
to unstable.