Re: Any ideas on whether or not a Wheezy LTS will happen or not

[Jeroen Dekkers <jeroen@dekkers.ch>]

At Mon, 30 Mar 2015 10:40:48 +0200,
Holger Levsen wrote:
> 
> On Montag, 30. März 2015, Michael Banck wrote:
> > Please keep in mind that wheezy will get regular maintenance for one
> > year after the jessie release, so the question whether there will be a
> > wheezy-lts or not is not imminent.
> 
> while I agree that the question is not imminent, I do think this question 
> should be answered sooner, eg. it would be good to decide on _jessie_ LTS 
> _now_, as it's an important factor when deciding whether to deploy jessie 
> soon, whether it will have 2 or 5 years security support. 

I agree, it would be nice if we can just state that Jessie will have 5
years of security support.
 
> That's said, I dont know how to "properly" decide this now and I also have no 
> idea how to guarantee that we'll keep this promise unless by proving we'll do 
> so, by doing so. Basically just like we release a new Debian version roughly 
> every 22 months since 10 years, even though this also not guaranteed.
> 
> So my current answer to the question about Wheezy or Jessie LTS is: "I have no 
> idea, but given Squeeze's LTS success, I think it's very likely we'll have 
> Wheezy + Jessie LTS. Please support Squeeze LTS and/or express your 
> appreciation / usage to make it happen."

The only reason I see for not doing Wheezy LTS or Jessie LTS would be
lack of funding, so why not just say "we will do a Wheezy LTS and
Jessie LTS as long as we have enough funding for it".

Another idea might be to see whether companies are willing to sign
contracts to commit to Wheezy LTS or even Jessie LTS. We showed that
we are able to do LTS with squeeze and if you're planning to deploy
Jessie for 5 years or keep running Wheezy for the next 3 years it
doesn't seem that strange to also commit to its security support. And
if they are afraid that not enough other companies keep their
commitment you can add a clause that they can terminate the contract
if LTS drops below a certain level of funding or maybe when not enough
security bugs get fixed.


Regards,

Jeroen Dekkers