Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes: > On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 12:18:32AM +0100, Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote: [... stable point releases ...] >> They're not really important as technical upgrade, but they give the >> impression that Debian releases something - after our last painful >> release cycle, many people have decided not to use Debian because of our >> (seemingly) slow development. Stable point releases are a nice touch to >> get a bit of trust back. > Huh? We had point releases on a more or less regular basis throughout > sarge's release cycle. "More or less regular" is true, but I'm not sure if "once a year" is good. Let me quote something I extracted from the Debian News archive yesterday: 3.0r0: 2002-07-19 3.0r1: 2002-12-16 3.0r2: 2003-11-21 3.0r3: 2004-08-26 3.0r4: 2005-01-01 3.0r5: 2005-04-16 3.0r6: 2005-06-02 We had one release update in 2002, one in 2003, one in 2004. After that, shortly before the always near sarge release, the situation improved, just to become worse for sarge again. > Why would the existence of sarge point releases inspire confidence in > our release cycle? Because the announcement title reads "Debian GNU/Linux $foo updated". Sounds good for users, updated distributions are nice. > Why *should* it inspire confidence? The two processes are almost > entirely unconnected. I know that, but most user don't know that. Public opinion is largely dictated by the usual newstickers - and a regular appearance with "Debian releases/updates $BLA" is good to give the impression that Debian is active. I know that some non-Debian people actually ask questions like "I heard Debian has split and is dead, what will happen in the future?" From time to time, just because Debian's PR work sucks so much. Marc -- BOFH #62: need to wrap system in aluminum foil to fix problem
Attachment:
pgpvXgtuj_bGL.pgp
Description: PGP signature