Guillaume answered:
>Neal Pitts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> I'd pay a subscription fee for a service that backported certain
>> "interesting" packages from cooker to the release version if it meant
I
>> could see them in say, maybe a month of release time. Why pay money?
To
>> encourage speedy releases, and to benifit from the integration that
>> Mandrake does well with all of the other software packages installed
on
>> the system. Does Mandrake offer a service like this?
>
>This is currently under question here at MandrakeSoft :-).
I think it's clear, to me at least, that a small company cannot possibly
stay in business if they've got too much legacy support. However, I do
understand the point of backporting things to the current release.
Mandrake obviously does this with the security releases. I have gotten
back ports to my 7.1 system for some things.
I think the biggest problem is that many people are beginning to think
cooker is a place to stay on the leading edge. But cooker is really the
bleeding edge, not the leading edge. Perhaps a tagline on the bottom of
cooker messages reminding everyone that cooker is not stable would be
good.
Another thought would be to look at the OpenBSD release model. They have
three branches. The release branch (the actual CD image), which is
frozen when the CD's go to press. The stable branch, which is
essentially updates to the release branch. And finally a current branch,
which is like cooker. On any given day something in current might be
broken.
I would probably abandon the stable updates on the old branch after a
new release. In other words, I probably would *NOT* do any backports on
a stable branch to 7.1. (I probably would continue security releases on
7.1 for a while. I would consider security releases for 12 months after
the branch is retired, but that may be too expensive.)
And I would keep hammering to people that cooker is *NOT* stable. Use it
at your own risk.
Michael
