Re: branding debian releases

["Monique Y. Mudama" <spam@bounceswoosh.org>]

On 2004-04-16, Chris Metzler penned:

[snip]

>
> But this assumption is wrong.  The purpose of the existence of testing
> and unstable is *not* to give users choices.  It may also be true that
> their existence gives users choices; but that's not what they're
> fundamentally for.  The purpose of their existence is to facilitate
> the development process that produces stable releases.  Users may
> decide to track unstable or testing (and many of us do); but the
> existence of those distros is to help the developers do what needs to
> be done to get packages into good shape and get releases out.  Period.

I agree, with one caveat:

> And thus, the most important thing is that the descriptions of these
> distros be clear to developers, and that their functions be useful for
> developers.  

If that's the most important thing, the very next most important thing
is that the descriptions make clear to non-developer users that testing
and unstable are not intended for them.  I see no such advisory in the
current descriptions.

> "Re-branding" the distros, and changing their descriptions, isn't
> sensible:  testing and unstable don't cleanly fall into categories
> that are sensible for users, and trying to label them that way is (as
> Monique said) trying to assign characteristics that don't exist.  But
> that's not a bug; that's a feature.  It's intentional.  Their purpose
> is to facilitate the job of the developers.

[snip]

-- 
monique