On Tuesday 25 September 2012 12:11:51 Togan Muftuoglu wrote:
On 09/25/2012 11:49 AM, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
On Monday, September 24, 2012 20:41:54 Jos Poortvliet wrote:
In any case. Point still stands: many users would appreciate a slower release cycle, for various reasons. It would also probably help release management as we could introduce longer freeze periods. It might make development more boring and will result in a more outdated openSUSE - but we can counter that probably with OBS fu.
We have already very long freeze periods and always increased them. This cannot be our answer each and every time - we need find to ways better so that we can freeze less. And this is the whole discussion about: How to improve our processes so that we have a better factory and release all the time?
<snip 1, 2 and 3 that make no sense> What use scenarios do you have in mind for openSUSE, I wonder? Let me lay out a few here for you. * Ad Min knows what he's doing. He's an experienced sysadmin and does some testing of openSUSE milestones when he has spare time. * Grand Ma knows not know much of computers but as long as she can print pictures from her grand children she's quite happy. * Yo Ung is new to the world of computing but she wants to learn to program. * Dev Elop has been developing software for a few years and has recently starting to package. Usage: * Ad Min has openSUSE on a few servers, his laptop and his desktop. * Yo Ung has picked up a openSUSE DVD at a conference as she heard about cool projects like OBS and tumbleweed and is going to play with it. * Grand Ma just has her one computer. Ad takes care of it, however! * Dev Elop has a computer for work and one for packaging. What do they run? Ad runs openSUSE Stable on the servers and on his laptop. On the laptop he has a bunch of OBS repo's to have the latest tools, but as he takes the laptop to customers, Factory or even Tumbleweed are no option. The desktop can be more up-to-date but is also for work so Factory gets installed in a VM while the system runs Tumbleweed or stable. Dev would run Factory on one computer but the other one is for work - Tumbleweed (or stable with a bunch of OBS repo's), as he's an enthusiast. Yo Ung wants to learn to program so she would take Tumbleweed or another distro like Arch Linux. Stable is too boring, Factory too unstable. Grand Ma wants a stable system and as Ad also has to take care of the computers of 8 other family members and wants as little maintenance, he only upgrades when he HAS to - and complains loudly that the openSUSE release cycle is too short. You see, Factory is no competitor for Tumbleweed. They have nothing to do with each other: people who would consider Tumbleweed don't consider Factory. Tumbleweed is for people who consider the 8 month release cycle too slow (like myself) and run many, many OBS repo's (which gets messy). Meanwhile, the 8 months release cycle is too short for other people like Ad and his servers and the systems he maintains for his family. So, yes, Coolo is right: 8 months is both too short and too long. THAT is why I proposed to have a 12 month cycle with more emphasis on OBS and Tumbleweed: that is NO longer too short AND too long. Right now, we have "meat nor fish" as the dutch would say: a real compromise, good for nobody. *Factory doesn't care* Yes, for development, all this doesn't matter. It won't make openSUSE Factory more stable - it probably won't make much difference, other than that we get less freezes so less stability on average (but that doesn't matter: it is the release which matters). For the users, this makes a huge difference: it makes openSUSE a much more viable choice for pretty much EVERY use case out there. That's why I argue for a 12 month cycle: better for ALL our users. So if it doesn't impact development much (as in - the final result would be as stable and getting it out the door is not any harder) I think we should try to move to this. *getting more factory testers* The key to getting more people to use Factory is to get more users AND get those users more involved in openSUSE: mentoring, better documentation, articles to engage people, openSUSE ambassadors at conferences, install fests, a better atmosphere in the project etcetera. You'll never get Grand Ma to use factory, she'll just move to Ubuntu LTS, same with Ad. Yo - you need to teach her how to contribute, than, yes, she'll start helping out. But we chase her away with our boring 8 month stability - tumbleweed is what attracts people to our distro! Please try to look outside of the folks on this mailing list to those hundreds of potential NEW people for this list... openSUSE will always continue to loose contributors (people leave, that's a fact of life) and if we don't have a distro which is actually good for some things as well as some exciting projects (like tumbleweed!) we'll simply fade into obscurity. And no, you won't get more Factory testers with that 'strategy'. /Jos
Togan