maybe backports should be considered a 1st class part of Debian; so in addition to old-stable, stable, testing, and unstable, we could add, "stable-useful". The fact of the matter is that the stable distribution today is pretty much useless for desktop users, and useless for people who need to install on modern servers (i.e., anything sold in the last 6 months).
I have to agree. Either that or release a small "base distribution" every 6 months, whose packages are only updated for security / serious bugs and as long as there's no ABI/API changes.
The rest of the packages, especially classical applications (Firefox, OO) where users generally want new features could be targeted at these releases, maybe even providing a "stable" and "current" version for each - both working with the same "base"
Debian has become too large to release in its entirety with any frequency whatsoever - instead of dropping archs or release requirements I'd rather try to separate "OS components" from "application components" . (Maybe I won't have to listen to "why can't I just install a new version of X, I can do that under Windows" anymore then.)
Getting all software from the same source (Debian) is great - as it is now the different flavors are a bit to monolithic for my taste.
C.