Hi all,
I have read the current news on the openSUSE team and the plans to step back from the development.
As pointed out by Wolfgang the team is stepping back from the release process for a certain amount of time.
In general, I don't see a big problem here, but one thing really makes me a bit anxious: As Coolo is also part of the team, is it even possible to release a new version of openSUSE without him?
At this point probably not that is correct. But there are two things to consider. First the openSUSE Team has committed to pick the release work back up and help get a 13.2 release out the door in November. Secondly there was no major movement of people pushing to stick with the 8 month release cycle and have a release in July.
Of those that spoke up a majority of people were OK with a 12 month release cycle. While we got to the 12 month cycle in kind of an ugly fashion, in the end those that do the work decide. There were few, if any, standing up to exclaim that we needed to have a release in July. Now we can argue over the potential reasons why people didn't stand up and make a push for a July release, but that is not necessarily going to help us.
From what I have read through the lines from previous posts, it's not only about release cycles, but to make factory more stable, so we could have some kind of rolling release, where a bare install media is generated every month or so. This also leads to the question if releases in the form we know, still make sense. Rolling would also bring the benefit that SUSE developers can step in and help, whenever they got some time to do so. Even more classic users could use factory for their setups as long as it's stable enough and they install updates on a regular basis (which could be communitcated clearly on the download page). Doing both, a stable rolling and regular releases, might lead to even more work then it's now. But maybe I am wrong here and a stable rolling might make releases easier. Greets Marcus