Hi Faheem,
I do agree quite a bit of what you shared. In fact, there are many
pushes and pulls happening both for what has been released as well
what is being released. On a slightly different footing, I had shared
this sometime back [1] [2] . It basically talks about automated
testing for which 2 things have been shared as solutions [3] [4] [5] .
Now even here there is shortage of people power although this should
interest people who want their packages to come to testing as soon as
possible. The faster the packages are in testing, they would be tested
more and theoretically freeze would be of shorter time-frame.
So we can pulls and tensions within the project here as well.
1. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/05/msg00523.html
2. http://wiki.debian.org/AlwaysReleasableTesting
3. jenkins.debian.net
4. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/08/msg00006.html
5. http://packages.debian.org/sid/autopkgtest
I would love to see what people make of this as well. I do agree with
your point that downstream can only do so much. i.e. why we see many a
times debian holding patches for things which upstream considers
outdated at times because they have users for them. Case in point,
classic GNOME.