On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 10:06 AM, Timothy Butterworth
I would like to see openSUSE start using the Major.0 release again and possibly move to this type of release cycle.
14.0 Evergreen Release 14.1 Developer/Tester/Enthusiast Release targeted to development of the next Evergreen 14.2 Developer/Tester/Enthusiast Release targeted to development of the next Evergreen 14.3 Developer/Tester/Enthusiast Release targeted to development of the next Evergreen 15.0 Evergreen Release (15.1 + 3 Months) = 14.0 Evergreen EOL
This would provide around a 13 month stabilizing for the Evergreen release before users need to migrate over to it. This would make an evergreen release receive support for just over four years, but incorporating release delays it would put us close to five years. Evergreen EOL = (5 Releases + 3 Months)
Let me make sure I understand your proposal: month 0: 14.0 month 8: 14.1 month 12: 14.0 End of normal support, start of Evergreen Support month 16: 14.2 month 24: 14.3 month 32: 15.0 month 40: 15.1 month 43: 14.0 Evergreen EOL month 44: 15.0 end of normal support, start of Evergreen Support So the Evergreen team would have a one month break every 44 months. During that month they would be preparing the process of moving to the next 31 month Evergreen support cycle. In the above, I'm not arguing for or against your proposal. I have no maintainer activity for Evergreen. I just wanted to make sure I understood the proposal. == With my opensuse maintainer hat on: The Evergreen cycle described may or may not be acceptable to the Evergreen team. The idea of openSUSE .0 releases only coming out every 32 months and those being especially well tested in advance is likely not going to fly. You should post that proposal on either the -project or -factory mailing list. As to your assumption that most users upgrade to a new release within the first 4 months of its release is belied by the facts. There is a blog post about the breakdown of users of the various versions. It is very enlightening to review. Scroll down to "INSTALLATIONS" at https://lizards.opensuse.org/2013/08/23/more-on-statistics/ Remember 11.4 was an Evergreen release, so you can see there were still a lot of 11.4, 12.1 and 12.2 users a few months after 12.3 came out. The real surprise in that for me is the number of 12.1 installations still in place at that point. They were in the last days of support (or it had already ended) and yet there was still a sizable number of users. In fact if you look at the older releases and try to find their end of support date via looking at the graph, I think you will fail. I would expect to see a significant migration away from a release either shortly before or shortly after the end of support. We don't see that. Greg -- Greg Freemyer -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org