Re: testing and no release schedule
On 26-Mar-04, 17:44 (CST), Adam McKenna <adam@flounder.net> wrote:
> There are penalties in Debian for not fulfilling one's responsibilities, just
> like at any real job. Yes, we can play semantic games and say 'nobody can
> force you to do anything', but if you don't do your work at Debian you will
> be marginalized in favor of those who do.
Sure. But the thing is, I only signed up to maintain a few packages.
> > Several maintainers are on the record as not caring about releases at
> > all - unstable meets their needs.
>
> But our priority is not the developers' needs. Our priorities are our users
> and free software. Our users need frequent stable releases.
Depends on the user. People with a room full of servers don't, in fact,
want frequent stable releases. We want rare releases, with security
fixes back-ported so that we don't have to upgrade to the lastest
whiz-bang release. Or, sure, do a release every six months, but keep a
security fixes coming for a couple of years on any given release.
This kind of requirement may not be *your* need. But they do exist, and
a large number of them are attracted to Debian precisely *because* we
don't release very often.
> Developers who state openly that they do not care about releases are
> in violation of the Social Contract.
Oh, crap. There are *lots* of different kinds of users. If nothing else,
every Debian Developer is a user. So if a certain subset of them are
happy with unstable, what's the big deal? If all I had to deal with was
my home desktop, I'd be happy with unstable, too.
Steve
--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net
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