Re: Woody / Stable

[Mark Eichin <eichin@thok.org>]

> Unfortunately, it could equally well be taken as an indication that the
> relevant developers are too busy trying to earn enough money to get
> through the next month, or have fallen off a cliff and been taken to
> hospital for 6 months, or even have lost interest in the release because
> too many people are asking when it is going to happen.

Indeed.  It isn't even a matter of not giving people credit for
competence -- a lot of working on debian is about *visibly* doing the
right thing, not just for ego, but to serve as an example to others.
(This visibility is part of why we need stable at all :-)

Also, it occurs to me that a lot of the tension has to do with simple
frustration: there are hundreds of developers who've worked towards
this release -- not merely keeping their own packages up to date, but
working on other RC bugs, testing installs, etc.  Now we're down to
the point where people are looking around and saying "ok, where do I
shovel next, or are we done?" and not really getting much.

At this point, the release team has an interesting power: they can say
"ok, *this* problem is in the way and we need help with it" and get
500 or 1000 people jumping in.  If anything, filtering that is the
trick.  If all that remains is security infrastructure, that's a bit
harder, not because the work is trickier (it is, but that doesn't
actually matter) but because people get tied up in trust issues...
but talking about it still helps.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org