On Monday 24 September 2012 10:03:08 Stephan Kulow wrote:
On 23.09.2012 13:31, Helen South wrote:
Attempting to follow this discussion, my impression is that there are differing ideas about what different concepts mean and what the consequences of some choices might be.
So perhaps it would be a good idea to take a few moments (okay it
might need more than a few) to make a brief overview of the development process and the factors affecting release time, and the consequences of short versus longer release schedules. Particularly how it relates to kernel development and updates, desktops (someone mentioned complaints about KDE versioning) and stability.
I understand this might be already known to many on the Project list since this is a development focus, but for less technical users 'listening in' to the conversation, it would be very helpful - and perhaps it would help the discussion to have these points clarified.
There is no hard data about this. There are different oppinions on how things relate. And then there are factors like "are higher KDE versions better without testing" that people just disagree on - so talking about release schedules is like talking about what kind of sneakers to wear.
The problem we have: we can only afford one type of sneakers for all. From my point of view, the whole discussion has shown: sticking to the roadmap we agreed on some years ago sounds like the best option.
... and keep our compromise solution which doesn't really work for anyone... The reason I proposed a 12 month cycle with Tumbleweed is that it actually solves the discussion about longer vs shorter: 12 months makes openSUSE a better choice for those people who take care of the computers of friends and family (where Ubuntu LTS now reigns) as it'll have the same 3 year life cycle (even a bit more). Meanwhile, Tumbleweed keeps those who want something fresh into openSUSE - beating even Fedora on having the latest, always. So, we attract more people to openSUSE. If we manage to improve on our user engagement (mentoring, marketing, documentation) this is what can bring more people to test Factory. Nothing else will, really. Staying on the current 8 month cycle and trying to force more people to use Factory means we just keep disappointing people, leading to less users and - well, less people testing Factory of course. Why care about a dead or dying distro? You really have to look OUTSIDE the people on this list, Coolo. People will always leave openSUSE, that is a fact of life - and if we fail in getting new people in, openSUSE will just go the way of the dodo. Tumbleweed has probably gotten us more users (and some of those might now become engaged) than anything else we've ever done. We should build on that, not ignore it. /Jos
Greetings, Stephan