Wookey <wookey@wookware.org> writes: > +++ Ian Jackson [2013-08-20 16:05 +0100]: > >> The bigger problem for a Debian LTS is this: 1. who is going to do >> security support for it ? > > Ideally it would be the people that want releases supported longer - > e.g this dreamhost outfit, and presumably many organisations like them. > > Security support is a very parallelisable task, so a small amout of > work by a lot of interested people ought to be do-able, but for > whatever reason this never seems to have prospered as a model. It > would be interesting to know why those entities that would like the > LTS don't choose to do this. Is it just because we don't make it easy > for them or because of free-loader aspects? > > I have always thought that there was room for a business selling > longer-term Debian support. Maybe someone does? Quite. Perhaps we just need to have a long-term-support page with pointers to those willing to provide that service to others, as well as resources for those who would rather co-operate on providing it for themselves. Doing that sort of long term support is not an exciting task that volunteers can be expected to flock to -- especially if one knows that the people demanding it are often tight-fisted parasitical middle managers that have not even bothered to inform themselves that Debian is not just another competitor to the commercial distros. It seems to me that doing things to keep these people cheerful should attract a financial reward. If that made the somewhat more enlightened companies band together to share the LTS workload amongst themselves somehow (possibly by having a limited distribution model of some sort, restricted to members of the mutual-support-club) then that would be no bad thing either. I suppose it would be nice if we could provide this long term support, but really it's going to consume scarce volunteer effort which will almost certainly have a negative impact on the progress of Debian proper. Cheers, Phil. -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] http://www.hands.com/ |-| HANDS.COM Ltd. http://www.uk.debian.org/ |(| 10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London E18 1NE ENGLAND
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