On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 11:24 AM, Alan Cox <alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Since you have a "little bit of experience" in development :) do you >> think that developers -- maybe mainly application developers? -- would >> benefit from this deadline for downstream releases(1)? Debian's "ready >> when it's ready" developers wouldn't appreciate much, I'm afraid, but >> some agree that they must work towards more (fixed? fixe, in french) >> development periods. (I don't care much about you commenting the rest >> of my post, but I'd be interested in getting your opinion on this.) > > Again it depends. If your application wants to use cool new feature X > then you want everyone to upgrade and then use your cool new app. If you > gain nothing much from upgrades but the hassle of having to rebuild, > retest etc then 'never' is quite a good upgrade rate. What I was talking about here, maybe it wasn't clear, is Mark Shuttleworth's proposal to release main distributions in step -- he excludes Debian from the obligation, it ssems :) -- every two years. I'll let him explain his proposal: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/290 He says this would ease maintainers' task. >> Hummm... I suppose every case is different. > > It's a question of benefit and timescales. It doesn't take you 18 months > to certify your desktop works and all the software on top is reliable, > make the entire set up pass a third party security audit, pass the > various credit card requirements, run performance analysis, track down > regressions and then roll out live bit by bit along with any retraining > along the way. > > Business timescales are long, and industrial timescales longer still. > There are PDP-11 systems (or these days often emulators!) still running > away in industrial plants doing what they've been doing for thirty odd > years. The machinery they are tied to is often good for fifty plus years > and depreciated accordingly, so there isn't a real urge to upgrade. > > The software folks have a very short term perspective - equalled perhaps > by only a few industries such as fashion clothing. Imagine if the first > PC you installed when you joined your first employer would be getting > decommissioned about the time you retired ? Hard to picture but in the > railroad world the chances are the first piece of track laid by some 18 > year old newbie platelayer will finally get retired about the same time > as the person who laid it. In civil engineering you often build things > that you expect to last hundreds of years. Todays engineers are doing > 'maintenance' (I guess you might consider it 'service pack 2' 8) on > victorian structures that will then be good for just light maintenance > for another century. > > This gives people a rather different sense of time and upgrading to > software engineers. Different perspective indeed :) -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
