subject:"Re\: Debian decides to adopt time\-based release freezes"

Hi,

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 03:08:02AM +0200, Meike Reichle wrote:
 The Debian project has decided to adopt a new policy of time-based
 development freezes for future releases, on a two-year cycle.

I find it deeply disturbing that DDs not attending Debconf learn about
this decision via debian-announce. I would have expected at the very
least to announce, if not discuss, on a developer list before.

Do we really need to go Ubuntu on this matter (both in the objective
and in the way of decision making)?

I do sincerely hope that there will be a GR to overrule this decision.

Greetings
Marc

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Sandro Tosi

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 09:14, Martin Wuertelem...@debian.org wrote:
 * Sandro Tosi mo...@debian.org [2009-07-29 07:39]:

  Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

 No, the project DID NOT decide it, the release team did, and the
 project has to accept it; there's a lot of difference.

 No see 4.1.3 of the constitution Make or override any decision
 authorised by the powers of the Project Leader or a Delegate.

of course, if we have to take formal steps for everything, we'll do a
GR. I hoped that in this project we can discuss ideas instead of
fight.

  Time-based freezes will allow the Debian Project to blend the
  predictability of time based releases with its well established policy of
  feature based releases. The new freeze policy will provide better
  predictability of releases for users of the Debian distribution, and also

 bullshit! we are trading quality for what? We release when it's ready,
 not when the clock ticks. it's completely a non-sense, and it's
 generating only bad feelings in developers and users.

 freeze != release, I'm not happy with the way the decision was
 communicated. I beg you to mind your wording tough.

I know it was unpolite, but it's the only way I can express my
feelings right now.

 1. what about the developers that couldn't come to DC? don't we
 deserve to be asked for our opinion? are we of a lower class? is this
 a decision only made by a team and then you want to us to pretend the
 whole project decided it?

 It is a delegate decision according to 2.5 of the constitution.

so let's call it this way: not Debian decided but a delegate
decided on behalf of the project, I think this clarifies what
happened.

-- 
Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu)
My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/
Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Holger Levsen

Hi,

On Mittwoch, 29. Juli 2009, Frans Pop wrote:
  The Debian project has decided to adopt a new policy of time-based
  development freezes for future releases, on a two-year cycle.
 Disappointing to see such an announcement without any prior discussion on
 d-project, d-devel or d-vote. 

I was and am also surprised. I do like the change but I'm not sure I like the 
way the Debian project has decided this...

 So from now on we release when it's time instead of when it's ready?

I think you got this wrong: AIUI: we freeze, when it's time (and December can 
become January or February... too) and release when it's ready. Sounds good 
to me.


regards,
Holger


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Steffen Moeller

Holger Levsen wrote:

 On Mittwoch, 29. Juli 2009, Frans Pop wrote:
 The Debian project has decided to adopt a new policy of time-based
 development freezes for future releases, on a two-year cycle.
 Disappointing to see such an announcement without any prior discussion on
 d-project, d-devel or d-vote. 
 
 I was and am also surprised. I do like the change but I'm not sure I like the 
 way the Debian project has decided this...

Same here. The release team, or the individual that pressed the button for the
announcement, I suggest to apologize for disturbing our community.

I don't think that there should be any formal rules on what kind of 
announcements can be
made with or without prior public discussion. Those would weaken us. We should 
trust our
delegates and allow them to react quickly and appropriately when required. The 
release
team has certainly discussed it all a lot and it may have felt like a public 
discussion to
them, but it was not. It is all a matter of taste IMHO, and here I sense some 
less
self-reflective maybe problematic judgement.

Steffen


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

Hi!

Ben Pfaff schrieb:

 The URL in the announcement is 404.  Possibly a prank.

Sorry, no prank just a delay since we missed the website rebuild and
where to lazy to wait four hours for the announcement to be send out
after the next website build.


Best regards,
  Alexander


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Luk Claes


Frans Pop wrote:

On Wednesday 29 July 2009, Meike Reichle wrote:

The Debian project has decided to adopt a new policy of time-based
development freezes for future releases, on a two-year cycle.


Disappointing to see such an announcement without any prior discussion on 
d-project, d-devel or d-vote. Some explanation of how and by who this 
decision was reached would be appreciated.


The Release Team proposed a plan in the keynote at DebConf. There were 
some important considerations, but in general the audience welcomed the 
plan.


The announcement was made to avoid confusion and unclear press coverage.


So from now on we release when it's time instead of when it's ready?
RC bugs are no longer relevant?


No, we freeze in time, we release when ready. RC bugs are still one of 
the measures to see when we are ready.


Thanks for your feedback.

Cheers

Luk


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

Hi!

Steffen Moeller schrieb:

 Same here. The release team, or the individual that pressed the button for the
 announcement, I suggest to apologize for disturbing our community.

The text was coordinated within the entire press team, our release
masters, the head of the technical commitee and the DPL.  IMHO there's
no need for an apology.


Best regards,
  Alexander


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Matthew Johnson

On Wed Jul 29 09:59, Sandro Tosi wrote:
 of course, if we have to take formal steps for everything, we'll do a
   predictability of time based releases with its well established policy of
   feature based releases. The new freeze policy will provide better
   predictability of releases for users of the Debian distribution, and also
 
  bullshit! we are trading quality for what? We release when it's ready,
  not when the clock ticks. it's completely a non-sense, and it's
  generating only bad feelings in developers and users.
 
  freeze != release, I'm not happy with the way the decision was
  communicated. I beg you to mind your wording tough.
 
 I know it was unpolite, but it's the only way I can express my
 feelings right now.

The tone aside, I think it is important to note the difference between
freezing on time and releasing on time. The freeze date  is a cut-off
for new upstream releases, feature development etc. Having a well-known
in advance date by which people need to complete their feature
development, particularly one which we know is hard and not (as we've
had recently) liable to slip will give developers the ability to plan
better. I know that in the last release I was holding off from uploading
things which I could have done because I thought we were about to freeze
and wanted to allow things to move to testing, but we didn't freeze, at
least partly because other developers hadn't planned well enough to time
their uploads with the announced freeze date.

The release, however, will be when it's ready. We have said nothing
about how long the freeze will be. I'm hopeful that the scheduled
freezes will allow us to reduce the freeze time.


-- 
Matthew Johnson


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 09:59:46AM +0200, Sandro Tosi wrote:
  1. what about the developers that couldn't come to DC? don't we
  deserve to be asked for our opinion? are we of a lower class? is this
  a decision only made by a team and then you want to us to pretend the
  whole project decided it?

  It is a delegate decision according to 2.5 of the constitution.

 so let's call it this way: not Debian decided but a delegate
 decided on behalf of the project, I think this clarifies what
 happened.

I'm surprised that this was announced on debian-announce before it had first
been announced on d-d-a[1], since that does carry a higher risk that a
decision that has been announced to the general public may be reverted due
to lack of support.  Nevertheless, the distinction between Debian decided
and a delegate decided on behalf of the project is not one that is
relevant on debian-announce.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org

[1] It was announced at the release team keynote at DebConf, but obviously
not everyone will have had a chance to see that yet


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Luk Claes


Sune Vuorela wrote:

On 2009-07-29, Frans Pop elen...@planet.nl wrote:



On Wednesday 29 July 2009, Meike Reichle wrote:

The Debian project has decided to adopt a new policy of time-based
development freezes for future releases, on a two-year cycle.

Disappointing to see such an announcement without any prior discussion on=20


I'm disappointed by the decision, the timing and the process.
I'm especially dissapointed about the we freeze after less than a year
of open unstable.

The process:

This is not something that should be done only by the release team
without a broad discussion amongst the developers, unless the relaese
team wants to do it them selves without cooperation from the package
maintainers.


Who would you like to propose a release cycle to the project if not the 
Release Team?


To be clear the Release Team cannot just decide what the release cycle 
will be, though we proposed a plan in the team's keynote at DebConf and 
the plan was welcomed by the audience. There were some important 
considerations though.



The timing:

If we are going to do a yearly release, we need to announce it to the
developers more than 5 months before freeze. Too many people have too
many plans.


We do not plan to do a yearly release, we plan to have a release about 
every 2 years while having a one time exception for next release by 
freezing this December.



We also need to coordinate such things with the larger packaging teams
to see wether it fits their schedules and their upstream schedules. For
example from a KDE point of view, it is around teh worst time.


I guess you are talking about freezing this December and not in general?

Lets discuss the issues regarding KDE and see if we can come to a solution.


...and we still have the same kernel and X in testing as in stable.


Both of which are being worked on currently.


The decision:

Why doing a 12 months release to get into the new schedule instead of
just adopting a 24 months schedule based on the lenny release? [1]


The main reason is that the Release Team hopes to now have the momentum 
to make a time based freeze work. If we would delay, it will very 
probably mean that many developers 'forget' about what the time based 
freeze is about.



By freezing after around 9 months after thawing, we will again annoy the
many sid users we have, and by doing releases after 12 months after a
release, we will start annoy the corporate users.


s/releases/release/


By freezing after around 9 months of unstable we annoy the developers
who wants to get stuff done before a release.


The developers have had the opportunity and still have the opportunity 
to get stuff done before the release. It's true that developers should 
probably consider to already be careful about what to upload, but there 
is still opportunity to do changes till the freeze.



And what happened to when it is ready ?


That has not changed at all. That's the reason we do not want to do a 
time based release, we will only release when we are ready.



If a freeze is expected to be short, the release team needs help from
the package maintainers. This is not the way to get the package
maintainers to help them.


It's indeed the package maintainers that can make sure that the freeze 
will take a long time. Though if they consider the points you made 
earlier in this mail I'm confident that they will try to keep the freeze 
short.



I'm considering how we can get this decision undone.  Anyone up for
helping with that?


Very constructive... what plan do you have in mind that will be shared 
by the Release Team and the project as a whole?



[1] Some people says it is to get to work better with ubuntu in security
things and other such stable support - and having the same package
versions will make it easier to share patches.  Unfortunately, in some
cases this will not fit. For example, Qt4.6 and KDE4.4 is expected to be
released in january, which would be right after the debian freeze. I
would be very surprised to see a ubuntu releaese in april with kde4.3
and qt4.5. And here, we now already have two browser engines that we
can't work properly together and share patches with ubuntu, because too
much has (probably) happened.
And for much other software, there is probably similar examples.


Are you confident that KDE will be better at releasing in time and with 
a higher quality than they are used to? Otherwise it looks to me like we 
would need many more months before we can freeze KDE.


Cheers

Luk


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Mario Fux

Am Mittwoch, 29. Juli 2009 schrieb Sune Vuorela:
 On 2009-07-29, Frans Pop elen...@planet.nl wrote:

Good morning

[snip]

 The timing:

 If we are going to do a yearly release, we need to announce it to the
 developers more than 5 months before freeze. Too many people have too
 many plans.
 We also need to coordinate such things with the larger packaging teams
 to see wether it fits their schedules and their upstream schedules. For
 example from a KDE point of view, it is around teh worst time.

As a KDE and Debian user I'm mainly concerned about this. Why do I have to 
miss every major release in January when Debian is freezed one month before?

KDE is a somehow quite big upstream. Why no better coordination?

Thx for your work
Mario


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Ben Finney

Marc Haber mh+debian-proj...@zugschlus.de writes:

 I find it deeply disturbing that DDs not attending Debconf learn about
 this decision via debian-announce. I would have expected at the very
 least to announce, if not discuss, on a developer list before.

Ditto. Conferences are a great way to get a bunch of people together and
kick ideas around, but they are *not* the Annual General Meeting of the
project.

Issues this sweeping should only be decided via clear, open discussion
using the established communication channels wfor the project. A
conference that only a fraction of Debian members can attend is not such
a channel.

-- 
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  `\   |
_o__)  |
Ben Finney


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Raphael Hertzog

On Wed, 29 Jul 2009, Sandro Tosi wrote:
 bullshit! we are trading quality for what?

Please don't be so aggressive and leave some time to RM to respond to your
comments before posting more mails

 Or there's something else behind the curtains that it's not being said
 (consciously), like ubuntu LTS?

Yes, it was said in the RM keynote at debconf. 

Note that the announce is meant mainly for the users/press, not for
developers.

But the idea of a press release came from the press team and not
necessarily from the RM. It would have been nice to have a simultaneous
announce for DD on d-d-a with more developer-oriented content.

  accommodate the needs of larger organisations and other users with a long
  upgrade process, the Debian project commits to provide the possibility to
  skip the upcoming release and do a skip-upgrade straight from Debian
  GNU/Linux 5.0 (Lenny) to Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 (not yet codenamed).
 
 so, what's the point in preparing squeeze? let's just skip it then

We are not only targetting big corporations. Either we do a full release
or we extend lenny to 3 years with lenny and a half. The release team
decided for the former.

It will be difficult but I think it's worth trying. As Colin commented in
the RM keynote, a one year release requires some discipline onto us, it's
not necessarily a bad idea to force ourselves into this.

 Not to mention how many angry replies are coming, I feel the community
 of debian developers is not accepting this decision silently.

I have almost never seen a decision that was not commented... that does
not mean that it won't last. The RM are entitled to take the decision and
while I was also surprised by it, I don't intend to work against it.

And there are many other people here at debconf that feel the same. You'll
see it in the video of the RM keynote.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:40:30AM +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
 Who would you like to propose a release cycle to the project if not the  
 Release Team?

 To be clear the Release Team cannot just decide what the release cycle  
 will be, though we proposed a plan in the team's keynote at DebConf and  
 the plan was welcomed by the audience. There were some important  
 considerations though.

Nobody would have objected to a proposal. This was a press release,
which has already been picked up by the major news sites. You didn't
propose anything, you announced a decision.

Greetings
Marc

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Julien Cristau

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:40:30 +0200, Luk Claes wrote:

 Who would you like to propose a release cycle to the project if not
 the Release Team?
 
Nobody proposed anything, you announced a decision to debian-announce.
Without, as far as I can tell, any prior discussion with the developers
(as had happened before lenny, see
87mz1di9ei@pindar.marcbrockschmidt.de for an example).  Why was
that not deemed necessary/appropriate this time around?

Cheers,
Julien


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:25:01AM +0200, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl wrote:
 Steffen Moeller schrieb:
  Same here. The release team, or the individual that pressed the button for 
  the
  announcement, I suggest to apologize for disturbing our community.
 
 The text was coordinated within the entire press team, our release
 masters, the head of the technical commitee and the DPL.

So that's the new secret cabal taking our decisions?

Greetings
Marc

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 09:59:46AM +0200, Sandro Tosi wrote:
 of course, if we have to take formal steps for everything, we'll do a
 GR. I hoped that in this project we can discuss ideas instead of
 fight.

I think the way this decision was announced showed clearly that is was
not intended to have a discussion about this topic.

Grüße
Marc

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Sune Vuorela

On 2009-07-29, Luk Claes l...@debian.org wrote:
 Who would you like to propose a release cycle to the project if not the 
 Release Team?

What I have seen so far, both from the press announcement and from the
video, it is not a proposal. it is a decision.


 To be clear the Release Team cannot just decide what the release cycle 
 will be, though we proposed a plan in the team's keynote at DebConf and 
 the plan was welcomed by the audience. There were some important 

And some people just don't feel good about taking the word in such
audiences. So you only get feedback by a specific kind of people.

 We also need to coordinate such things with the larger packaging teams
 to see wether it fits their schedules and their upstream schedules. For
 example from a KDE point of view, it is around teh worst time.

 I guess you are talking about freezing this December and not in general?

No. KDE releases january and july.

 By freezing after around 9 months of unstable we annoy the developers
 who wants to get stuff done before a release.

 The developers have had the opportunity and still have the opportunity 
 to get stuff done before the release. It's true that developers should 
 probably consider to already be careful about what to upload, but there 
 is still opportunity to do changes till the freeze.

Already be careful yeah - that's exactly what I mean. We don't have
enough time to get stuff done.

 If a freeze is expected to be short, the release team needs help from
 the package maintainers. This is not the way to get the package
 maintainers to help them.

 It's indeed the package maintainers that can make sure that the freeze 
 will take a long time. Though if they consider the points you made 
 earlier in this mail I'm confident that they will try to keep the freeze 
 short.

As repeated. This is not the way to get the package maintainers to help
the release team.

 I'm considering how we can get this decision undone.  Anyone up for
 helping with that?

 Very constructive... what plan do you have in mind that will be shared 
 by the Release Team and the project as a whole?

I'm fine with the current aim for 18 months, release after 21 months
schedule that we have been doing with etch and lenny.


 [1] Some people says it is to get to work better with ubuntu in security
 things and other such stable support - and having the same package
 versions will make it easier to share patches.  Unfortunately, in some
 cases this will not fit. For example, Qt4.6 and KDE4.4 is expected to be
 released in january, which would be right after the debian freeze. I
 would be very surprised to see a ubuntu releaese in april with kde4.3
 and qt4.5. And here, we now already have two browser engines that we
 can't work properly together and share patches with ubuntu, because too
 much has (probably) happened.
 And for much other software, there is probably similar examples.

 Are you confident that KDE will be better at releasing in time and with 
 a higher quality than they are used to? 

I'm pretty confident that ubuntu will release with the newest kde -
unless they are planning to change what they have been doing ever since
they started on kde.

kde 4.1 released exactly on time. kde 4.2 released exactly on time.
kde4.3 is unfortunately going to slip 1 week.

And the kde developers have gotten much better in not letting as many
regressions in in third digit releases than in the 3.5 series.

 Otherwise it looks to me like we 
 would need many more months before we can freeze KDE.

You can just freeze kde now if you want to.

/Sune


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Luk Claes


Sandro Tosi wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1


Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes


No, the project DID NOT decide it, the release team did, and the
project has to accept it; there's a lot of difference.


No, the Release Team proposed a plan. The project is free to accept or 
refuse the plan. Of course refusing the plan will have its consequences 
within the Release Team as well as within the project.



The Debian project has decided to adopt a new policy of time-based
development freezes for future releases, on a two-year cycle. Freezes


and what are the real advantages of this? I saw none in this announce.


The main advantage of a time based freeze would be that developers have 
a clear idea about when the cutoff is for new features and when the 
period of stabilising to a release starts. This should give developers a 
 better chance to plan and more responsibility in how they want to 
support their packages.



will from now on happen in the December of every odd year, which means
that releases will from now on happen sometime in the first half of every
even year.  To that effect the next freeze will happen in December 2009,
with a release expected in spring 2010. The project chose December as a
suitable freeze date since spring releases proved successful for the
releases of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codenamed Etch) and Debian GNU/Linux
5.0 (Lenny).


if time-based is REALLY needed, why then not freeze on even Dec and
release on Spring on odd years? this will allow the current release
cycle to have enough time to achieve something, while letting
time-based proposers happy.


The main reason is that we now have the momentum to try a time based 
freeze and that delaying the freeze would cause developers to 'forget' 
about what a time based freeze is about.



Time-based freezes will allow the Debian Project to blend the
predictability of time based releases with its well established policy of
feature based releases. The new freeze policy will provide better
predictability of releases for users of the Debian distribution, and also


bullshit! we are trading quality for what? We release when it's ready,
not when the clock ticks. it's completely a non-sense, and it's
generating only bad feelings in developers and users.


Hmm, you put it very negative while the intention is not at all how you 
put it:


We will only release when we are ready to make sure we do not have to 
trade quality.
We will freeze on a upfront specified date to give developers a chance 
to better plan what should be included in the release.



and predictability is the only advantage of this proposal? if so, then
simply let's drop it: pro and cons are damn wrong.


No, see above.


allow Debian developers to do better long-term planning.  A two-year
release cycle will give more time for disruptive changes, reducing


Not this time.


True, this time we want to make sure we have the momentum to do a time 
based freeze and maybe get some developers to think about shorter time 
plans.



inconveniences caused for users. Having predictable freezes should also
reduce overall freeze time.


should we remember here that lenny freeze took +6 months?


Note that how long the freeze takes is the responsibility of all 
developers as the most important measure (RC bugs) can be influenced by 
everyone.



The new freeze policy was proposed and agreed during the Debian Project's
yearly conference, DebConf, which is currently taking place in Caceres,
Spain. The idea was well received among the attending project members.


1. what about the developers that couldn't come to DC? don't we
deserve to be asked for our opinion? are we of a lower class? is this
a decision only made by a team and then you want to us to pretend the
whole project decided it?


Not at all. The Release Team proposed a plan and it was welcomed during 
the team's keynote at DebConf. But your and others input is very much 
appreciated.


The announcement was made to be sure that press coverage would not 
differ from the actual message and confuse people. It seems it has not 
reached that goal completely, though the intentions were good.



2. it doesn't seem all the attendants agreed with it, given what
happened yesterday evening on #debian-release.


I don't know what happened yesterday evening on #debian-release.


To conclude:

- - we are giving up our quality-based release for a time-based one
for no particular reason


Not at all.


- - there is a constant drift away from debian by our users, this
would be the killing shot


Why? We do try to take into account considerations to improve the usability.


- - this is a change in our most important aspect of our work: the
release. How can I go now to my boss and propose to switch to debian
once this is happening?


You could propose the skip one release if needed.

Cheers

Luk


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Tshepang Lekhonkhobe

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:40, Luk Claesl...@debian.org wrote:
 Why doing a 12 months release to get into the new schedule instead of
 just adopting a 24 months schedule based on the lenny release? [1]

 The main reason is that the Release Team hopes to now have the momentum to
 make a time based freeze work. If we would delay, it will very probably mean
 that many developers 'forget' about what the time based freeze is about.

How about using this opportunity to help fulfill the Shuttleworth
dream of freezing both Ubuntu LTS and Debian at the same time? He self
mentioned he's willing to reach a 'compromise' if Debian or another
major distro is willing to co-operate, that is if it's willing to
freeze the same upstream versions of key components (Linux, X, GNU
toolkit, ...).



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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread MJ Ray

Marc Haber mh+debian-proj...@zugschlus.de wrote:
 I do sincerely hope that there will be a GR to overrule this decision.

Hoping doesn't make it happen.  I'm upset by the horribly botched
process, but I'm not willing to reverse this decision for that alone.
I doubt I'm unusual in that, so anyone looking for a GR proposer
probably should look at themselves.

I don't think there's a GR power to recall a delegate (even if we're
sure which individual delegates decided this) and it's a long time
until the next DPL election which could include delegate changes in
its platform, so what else can you do?  Lobby the DPL?  Amend the
constitution to make such a GR power?  Complain on -project?

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 6:21 AM, Luk Claesl...@debian.org wrote:
 Frans Pop wrote:

 On Wednesday 29 July 2009, Meike Reichle wrote:

 The Debian project has decided to adopt a new policy of time-based
 development freezes for future releases, on a two-year cycle.

 Disappointing to see such an announcement without any prior discussion on
 d-project, d-devel or d-vote. Some explanation of how and by who this
 decision was reached would be appreciated.

 The Release Team proposed a plan in the keynote at DebConf. There were some
 important considerations, but in general the audience welcomed the plan.

It is quite strange, in my POV, that it wasn't discussed with main
teams (kernel, X, KDE, GNOME, d-i, ...) inside of Debian.

We all know that even Debconf has a lot of people most of those
projects hadn't people attending to the KeyNote and then this is not
the proper place to _propose_ a plan. This is suppose to have been
sent to debian-devel-announce, discussed and then after all announced.

AFAIK the main point of communication for Debian Developers are
debian-devel-announce and debian-announce. I was surprise that a
KeyNote is not a formal way of making proposals and GET resolutions
done.

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Joerg Jaspert


 Disappointing to see such an announcement without any prior discussion on=20
 I'm disappointed by the decision, the timing and the process.
 I'm especially dissapointed about the we freeze after less than a year
 of open unstable.

I agree. For myself it would mean i can stop nearly any project for the
archive we have running currently, as all of them have the risk of
breaking something and needing time to fix it up. No source v3, no
debtags, no splitted Descriptions, all can go away thanks to this.
IMO it would have been much wiser to chose next December for the first
freeze, that would leave everyone enough time for their projects and not
cut them all away with the short remaining time.

 This is not something that should be done only by the release team
 without a broad discussion amongst the developers, unless the relaese
 team wants to do it them selves without cooperation from the package
 maintainers.

Here I disagree, even if I hate the way this is announced.

The Debian project did empower the Release Team to manage our
releases. We did not tell them Manage the release by exactly following
whatever we did in the past. So they are entirely free to chose the way
a release is done.

What I agree with is that the whole announcement of this went out in the
uttermost stupid way that was possible to achieve. This is not to blame
the press team, its their job to send out such stuff when someone in
Debian approaches them and gives them useful content. The blame for this
is entirely on the Release Team which should have learned from prior
mistakes (like mine, hello DD levels).

A much better way of handling this would have been to have the
discussion during their DebConf session and then going to
debian-rele...@l.d.o and presenting it there. Here, this is what we
intend to do, please comment, it will be released to the public soon.
(And fuck the press thats too dumb and takes news out of random
project lists).

 If we are going to do a yearly release, we need to announce it to the
 developers more than 5 months before freeze. Too many people have too
 many plans.

I agree.

 We also need to coordinate such things with the larger packaging teams
 to see wether it fits their schedules and their upstream
 schedules. For example from a KDE point of view, it is around teh
 worst time.

Well. If the announcement happens a year before (or more), then there is
nothing much needed. Freezes are to be expected and a timeline longer
than this would be ok.

 And what happened to when it is ready ?

Its the freeze, not the release. I doubt that this is thrown out, but it
is attached to the release, not freeze.

 I'm considering how we can get this decision undone.  Anyone up for
 helping with that?

I object, but feel free to if you really must.
As I already said the Release Team *does* have the power to take such
decisions. If you go on with a GR you effectively take away this
power. Not that good an idea IMO.


Also, as we empowered them to do releases and finding the best way to do
them is one of their tasks - lets try this. If it doesn't work out,
heck, we can always change our minds.
I disagree with the we announced it, we can't change our mind. Thats
wrong. We can tell people Hey, we tested it, it doesn't work for us, we
are now going this other road.

Though I really suggest the release team to go and think about dropping
the freeze this December, but making it next one. *PLEASE* keep the
system open for development a bit longer. Thanks.



On 11826 March 1977, Luk Claes wrote:
 Who would you like to propose a release cycle to the project if not the
 Release Team?

This wasn't a proposal, this was a full fledged announcement and
decision. A proposal looks *much* different than a post to -announce.

 To be clear the Release Team cannot just decide what the release cycle
 will be, though we proposed a plan in the team's keynote at DebConf and
 the plan was welcomed by the audience. There were some important
 considerations though.

So, having like 20 (or a hundred) people within one talk room made this
the announce? Uh.

 If we are going to do a yearly release, we need to announce it to the
 developers more than 5 months before freeze. Too many people have too
 many plans.
 We do not plan to do a yearly release, we plan to have a release about
 every 2 years while having a one time exception for next release by
 freezing this December.

Please reconsider this and move the freeze a year later. A freeze this
december *does* block about aall interesting things that we would want
to happen in squeeze. Squeeze wouldnt be more than a lenny+0.8 release
then. And thats really nothing *I* would love to attach my name too.

 I'm considering how we can get this decision undone.  Anyone up for
 helping with that?
 Very constructive... what plan do you have in mind that will be shared
 by the Release Team and the project as a whole?

Sorry, but this style of announce unfortunately asked for such replies.


 The text was

Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 12:22:48PM +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
 Sandro Tosi wrote:
 No, the project DID NOT decide it, the release team did, and the
 project has to accept it; there's a lot of difference.

 No, the Release Team proposed a plan. The project is free to accept or  
 refuse the plan. Of course refusing the plan will have its consequences  
 within the Release Team as well as within the project.

My legal teacher once said (in German): If you have a cow, it doesn't
matter whether or how often you write 'horse' on it, it will stay a
cow.   The Release Team didn't propose a plan. It announced a
decision to the press.

 The main advantage of a time based freeze would be that developers have  
 a clear idea about when the cutoff is for new features and when the  
 period of stabilising to a release starts. This should give developers a  
  better chance to plan and more responsibility in how they want to  
 support their packages.

As a developer, I felt myself well-informed by the release time about
freeze and release time plans in the past. No need to change anything here.

 The announcement was made to be sure that press coverage would not  
 differ from the actual message and confuse people.

The actual message was this is how we're going to do things in the
future and no discussion about this is wanted.

Greetings
Marc

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Sune Vuorela

On 2009-07-29, Joerg Jaspert jo...@debian.org wrote:
 I'm considering how we can get this decision undone.  Anyone up for
 helping with that?

 I object, but feel free to if you really must.
 As I already said the Release Team *does* have the power to take such
 decisions. If you go on with a GR you effectively take away this
 power. Not that good an idea IMO.

I'm hoping that we can convince the release team to change their mind.
By reading Luk's replies in this thread and looking at the way this was
communicated, I'm not that confident that it will succeed.

Do we as developers have other ways to say This is really bad, please
don't other than doing a GR. 

I do not want to disarm the release team in general, but I do want to
communicate that I find this (decision, process, timing) very bad for
debian, for me and for my motivation to do debian work.

If I end up having to choose wether to disarm the current release team
in general or not being able to properly communicate what I_think is
inappropriate, I guess I need to figure out what to do.

I really hope that release team will change its mind.

 Please reconsider this and move the freeze a year later. A freeze this
 december *does* block about aall interesting things that we would want
 to happen in squeeze. Squeeze wouldnt be more than a lenny+0.8 release
 then. And thats really nothing *I* would love to attach my name too.

Ack.

/Sune


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

Tshepang Lekhonkhobe wrote:
 On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:40, Luk Claesl...@debian.org wrote:
 Why doing a 12 months release to get into the new schedule instead of
 just adopting a 24 months schedule based on the lenny release? [1]
 The main reason is that the Release Team hopes to now have the momentum to
 make a time based freeze work. If we would delay, it will very probably mean
 that many developers 'forget' about what the time based freeze is about.
 
 How about using this opportunity to help fulfill the Shuttleworth
 dream of freezing both Ubuntu LTS and Debian at the same time? He self
 mentioned he's willing to reach a 'compromise' if Debian or another
 major distro is willing to co-operate, that is if it's willing to
 freeze the same upstream versions of key components (Linux, X, GNU
 toolkit, ...).


The only reason for this dream is to make sure that Debian fixes the Ubuntu bugs
for free.


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Daniel Baumann

Luk Claes wrote:
 The project is free to accept or
 refuse the plan. Of course refusing the plan will have its consequences
 within the Release Team as well as within the project.

and by announcing this plan that *bold* to the whole world, you also
made perfectly sure that it is as unconvenient as possible for the
project to overrule an already announced RM decission, publicity-wise.

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

Joerg Jaspert wrote:
 Please reconsider this and move the freeze a year later. A freeze this
 december *does* block about aall interesting things that we would want
 to happen in squeeze. Squeeze wouldnt be more than a lenny+0.8 release
 then. And thats really nothing *I* would love to attach my name too.
 

Ack.
Not talking with the large packaging and infrastructure teams before making such
a decision and just deciding a fixed date is a complete failure of the release
team. Its the minimum we should be able to expect from them. Fixed and regular
freeze dates are nice to have, but not without finding a proper way and date to
begin. And making Ubuntu happy is *not* more important than the wishes of our
infrastructure teams or the KDE and Gnome teams.

If you really want to force a freeze in December, don't expect any help from me.
Probably a good time to find a new distribution then... or to start a GR. Not
sure what is better for my nerves.

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Armin Berres

On Wed, 29 Jul 09 11:40, Luk Claes wrote:
 Sune Vuorela wrote:
 I guess you are talking about freezing this December and not in general?
 
 Lets discuss the issues regarding KDE and see if we can come to a solution.

Good. So let me propose something.

 Are you confident that KDE will be better at releasing in time and
 with a higher quality than they are used to? Otherwise it looks to
 me like we would need many more months before we can freeze KDE.

Yes, we are quite sure, that KDE will release in time. KDE 4.3 released
slipped a week, but all the RCs have already been very stable.

You want to try something with the next release? So let me propose the
following: We ship the exactly same Upstream KDE as Ubuntu -- talking
about version numbers here. This really allows us to use the momentum 
between Debian and Ubuntu on the Desktop front. Everything else is just
useless.
In the end this means: In January we put 4.4 (or maybe even the RCs, as
they are normally stable) into unstable, and later we also put the 4.4.1
and 4.4.2 (maybe also 4.4.3) into unstable. I am very sure we will not
not introduce RC bugs which will not be fixed within very less days, but
we will fix a lot of minor bugs with the uploads. Your job is just to
unblock the fun then :)
In the freeze times, the changes happening to the KDE packages are very
marginal. We do win nothing by freezing that long (and yes, I do not
believe the freeze is over after 3 months).

So, do you think we can manage to ship Squeeze with the best KDE ever,
to make Squeeze the best Debian ever, and at the same time align with
Ubuntu which will release before us?

Greetings,
Armin
member of the Debian Qt KDE team


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

Sandro Tosi wrote:
 On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 06:45, Sune Vuorelanos...@vuorela.dk wrote:
 I'm considering how we can get this decision undone.  Anyone up for
 helping with that?
 
 count me in.

me too. Obviously we need to force the release team to talk with the important
teams in Debian. If i'd have to come up with a GR it would probably sound like
While we appreciate the plan of fixed freeze cycles, the plan to start them in
December 2009 is not acceptable for the project. We ask the release team to talk
with all important teams (kernel, d-i, kde, gnome, ftp-master, dsa,) to find
an appropriate date.

Of course its not easy to find a date which makes all teams completely happy,
but the release team should try to do so at least.

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Nico Golde

Hi,
* Sune Vuorela nos...@vuorela.dk [2009-07-29 12:07]:
 On 2009-07-29, Luk Claes l...@debian.org wrote:
  Who would you like to propose a release cycle to the project if not the 
  Release Team?
 
 What I have seen so far, both from the press announcement and from the
 video, it is not a proposal. it is a decision.
[...] 
Why is that such a big problem for you? I mean without 
stating my opinion about the content of this decision itself 
I think as it's the release teams job to make such decisions 
and for myself just trust them that this is the best 
decision for the project. Everyone is free to join the 
release team and take part in such discussions if you really 
want that. I am not sure either whether that is a good 
decision or not but I feel not competent enough in the area 
of release team work to 100% judge that so I just trust in 
their work and their experience. That's what teams are for, 
reducing workload.

The only thing that really bugs me a bit that the security 
team hasn't been contacted about this beforehand as well and 
as we need to support the releases this sucks a bit. But 
well, let's see what happens and LART them later in case of 
problems.

Cheers
Nico
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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

Hello,

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 8:45 AM, Nico Golden...@ngolde.de wrote:
 The only thing that really bugs me a bit that the security
 team hasn't been contacted about this beforehand as well and
 as we need to support the releases this sucks a bit. But
 well, let's see what happens and LART them later in case of
 problems.

Specially because RM team expect us, as developers, to support
upgrades from 5.0 to 7.0; this means that Security Team will need to
support Debian 5.0, Debian 6.0 and Debian 7.0 at SAME time.

I'd like to hear from RM team how they expect it to be done since they
ought to have though about that when _planning_ this schedule.

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

Hi!

Marc Haber schrieb:

 Same here. The release team, or the individual that pressed the button for 
 the
 announcement, I suggest to apologize for disturbing our community.
 The text was coordinated within the entire press team, our release
 masters, the head of the technical commitee and the DPL.
 So that's the new secret cabal taking our decisions?

Yes, of course.  Tomorrow we planed to decide to grant us a bonus on our
payment, since we think we are doing a good job.

No, seriously:  Steffen suggested the one who pressed the button for the
announcement to apologise.  I answered, that the ones, who pressed the
button, where simply doing their job with the OK from several instances
above.  If you don't like that, don't shoot the messenger, because they
might get sick of being shooten at at every occasion; thanks.


Best regards,
  Alexander


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Thijs Kinkhorst

On Wed, July 29, 2009 14:24, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl wrote:
 If you don't like that, don't shoot the messenger, because they
 might get sick of being shooten at at every occasion; thanks.

I think an important critic in this thread is the way the message was
brought: DD's like myself are learning of this decision from a press
release. Affected teams haven't been asked or even informed beforehand.

This is definitely something that the 'messenger' should have considered
before deciding to take this route to announce the plan, don't you think?


Thijs


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Stephen Frost

* Sune Vuorela (nos...@vuorela.dk) wrote:
 I'm hoping that we can convince the release team to change their mind.

I doubt you can, and I hope you don't.  It could have been announced
better, but in general I think it's a good thing for Debian.  Please get
over how it was announced.

Thanks,

Stephen


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Stephen Frost

* Sandro Tosi (mo...@debian.org) wrote:
  From what I understand because the long freeze period we had last time
  is making problems all around for users (of unstable/testing) and
  developers as well as the release itself.
 
 This is a fact (lenny release was too long) but doesn't address how a
 fixed freeze start would generate a shorter freeze period.

Having a fixed freeze start helps people plan, of course.  Having a
release date goal helps make it happen.

Just to toss out another example, PostgreSQL has been trying to get to a
time-based release system for a while.  It's getting pretty close now,
but these things take time and there will be challenges ahead.  Overall,
I think this is a good thing for Debian.

Thanks,

Stephen


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Joerg Jaspert


 No, the project DID NOT decide it, the release team did, and the
 project has to accept it; there's a lot of difference.
 No, the Release Team proposed a plan. The project is free to accept or
 refuse the plan. Of course refusing the plan will have its consequences
 within the Release Team as well as within the project.

So you basically try to suppress all discussion by issuing an eat this
or get another release team?

 and what are the real advantages of this? I saw none in this announce.
 The main advantage of a time based freeze would be that developers have
 a clear idea about when the cutoff is for new features and when the
 period of stabilising to a release starts. This should give developers a
 better chance to plan and more responsibility in how they want to
 support their packages.

I don't think anyone is arguing against the time based freeze way of
doing things.
The arguments go against the way you announced this *and* the extremely
short timeframe you leave the project to develop its distribution, thus
limiting squeeze to be just a lenny point release, compared to what we
had in prior releases.

 if time-based is REALLY needed, why then not freeze on even Dec and
 release on Spring on odd years? this will allow the current release
 cycle to have enough time to achieve something, while letting
 time-based proposers happy.
 The main reason is that we now have the momentum to try a time based
 freeze and that delaying the freeze would cause developers to 'forget'
 about what a time based freeze is about.

Sorry, you are happily destroying the momentum for a lot of people in
core and large teams.

 should we remember here that lenny freeze took +6 months?
 Note that how long the freeze takes is the responsibility of all
 developers as the most important measure (RC bugs) can be influenced by
 everyone.

And thats why the Release Team should gather the developers behind them,
not in front against them. :)

 Not at all. The Release Team proposed a plan and it was welcomed during
 the team's keynote at DebConf. But your and others input is very much
 appreciated.

It was welcomed by how many people? A dozen? Uh.

 The announcement was made to be sure that press coverage would not
 differ from the actual message and confuse people. It seems it has not
 reached that goal completely, though the intentions were good.

s/completly/at all/.
Really, the press is *unimportant* compared to communication *within*
the project. We are not a company which income depending on them. If the
press is dumb enough to take a story out of a non-announce list, then
fine, idiots everywhere. But that shouldn't have stopped you from
talking to *the* *project* first, instead of to press monkeys (our
press@ not meant with that).

-- 
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Some NM:
Debian is mostly about free keysigning^Wspeech.


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 01:36:16PM +0200, Bernd Zeimetz wrote:
  count me in.

 me too. Obviously we need to force the release team to talk with the
 important teams in Debian. If i'd have to come up with a GR it would
 probably sound like While we appreciate the plan of fixed freeze cycles,
 the plan to start them in December 2009 is not acceptable for the project.
 We ask the release team to talk with all important teams (kernel, d-i,
 kde, gnome, ftp-master, dsa,) to find an appropriate date.

Would *you* intend to talk to all of these teams, before starting a GR
declaring that the proposed timeline is not acceptable to them?

-- 
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Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/
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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

Hi!

Thijs Kinkhorst schrieb:

 If you don't like that, don't shoot the messenger, because they
 might get sick of being shooten at at every occasion; thanks.
 I think an important critic in this thread is the way the message was
 brought: DD's like myself are learning of this decision from a press
 release. Affected teams haven't been asked or even informed beforehand.
 
 This is definitely something that the 'messenger' should have considered
 before deciding to take this route to announce the plan, don't you think?

Please try to put yourself in our (the press teams) place:
* In the release teams keynote a major change is announced
* It is clear, that the topic will be picked up by journalists
* It is also clear, that the topic will sooner or later be seen on
planet.debian.org or some mailing list

As press team we can either wait for journalists to pick it up from
random blog posts and mails or we can try to draft an official
announcement, get it OKed by as much involved people as possible.  If
possible we will decide on the later option to prevent confusion or
articles written based on biased blogs or mails, otherwise we would do a
very bad job to Debian by just waiting.

If you don't like what was announced, feel free to discuss it the
release team.  But don't blame us for doing our job.


Best regards,
  Alexander


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

Steve Langasek wrote:
 On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 01:36:16PM +0200, Bernd Zeimetz wrote:
 count me in.
 
 me too. Obviously we need to force the release team to talk with the
 important teams in Debian. If i'd have to come up with a GR it would
 probably sound like While we appreciate the plan of fixed freeze cycles,
 the plan to start them in December 2009 is not acceptable for the project.
 We ask the release team to talk with all important teams (kernel, d-i,
 kde, gnome, ftp-master, dsa,) to find an appropriate date.
 
 Would *you* intend to talk to all of these teams, before starting a GR
 declaring that the proposed timeline is not acceptable to them?

Where did I say that the timeline is not acceptable for the teams?I said the
timeline is not acceptable at all. And you should talk to the teams to find a
proper date.

-- 
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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Giacomo Catenazzi


Luk Claes wrote:
The main reason is that the Release Team hopes to now have the momentum 
to make a time based freeze work. If we would delay, it will very 
probably mean that many developers 'forget' about what the time based 
freeze is about.


Is it so important this momentum? Is it grave, for DD, to forget about
release cycles? We have debian new that will remember us our duties.


Anyway, in next weeks could you (RM in general) give some more precise 
plan about next releases? and what DD should do/not do in next few

months?

We changed this week the default shell, we changed this week the init.d 
mechanism, it was proposed to pass shortly to upstart.
There was announced plan to dpkg-source version 3.  I see a lot changes, 
but few time. How do we must handle it? What plan has RM to maintain 
Debian quality? Did you skip some changes?


ciao
cate


PS: dpkg-source version v3 was announced very early: good. But I find
lack of announcement of other important changes, could the RM announce
earlier huge plans.


PS: is it only an impression or there is a plan to block
Debian specific changes (src v3), destructive for ubuntu and go to 
Ubuntu essential programs (insserv/upstrart) in so short time?


We must care as priority our quality. The quality of derivatives
should come only as later priority.


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 03:17:27PM +0200, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl wrote:
  If you don't like that, don't shoot the messenger, because they
  might get sick of being shooten at at every occasion; thanks.
  I think an important critic in this thread is the way the message was
  brought: DD's like myself are learning of this decision from a press
  release. Affected teams haven't been asked or even informed beforehand.

  This is definitely something that the 'messenger' should have considered
  before deciding to take this route to announce the plan, don't you think?

 Please try to put yourself in our (the press teams) place:
 * In the release teams keynote a major change is announced
 * It is clear, that the topic will be picked up by journalists

I wonder why this is clear, exactly - I didn't notice journalists in the
room during the talk, and I doubt they're watching the DebConf video feed in
realtime.  Don't you think there was time here to have a developer
announcement + discussion first, without worrying about the press covering
it before we'd even posted to d-d-a?

One of the reasons I heard mentioned here at DebConf for putting out a press
release was to give our *users* as much warning as possible that the release
cycle would be different, so that they could plan accordingly.  I think this
was a good reason for doing a press release soon; I don't think it was
urgent to have it happen immediately, and I think having it happen this way
has had an unfortunate effect on the developer discussion process.

(Which is still an important and necessary process, even if some people
currently feel the release team is shoving this decision down their throats
- if there are problems with the proposed plan, we can only fix those and
make the next Debian release as great as possible by discussing them
respectfully and working together to solve them.)

-- 
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Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/
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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 12:41:40PM +0530, Kartik Mistry wrote:
 On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Goswin von Brederlowgoswin-...@web.de 
 wrote:
  It was discussed at debconf. Lots of explanation given there seems to
  have been left out of the announcement.
 
 BOF? Talk? Where I can find explanation(s)?



There was NOT (public) discussion in debconf about this, it was just presented 
in the keynote as taken decision.

Ana


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:21:09AM +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
 
 The Release Team proposed a plan in the keynote at DebConf. There
 were some important considerations, but in general the audience
 welcomed the plan.


I am sorry Luk, but keeping in silent does not mean agreing with what has been
said. I think large part of the audience just was very surprised and wanted 
to think deeper about the idea before raise properly argued concerns.

Ana


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Stefano Zacchiroli

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:49:40AM +, Sune Vuorela wrote:
 Do we as developers have other ways to say This is really bad, please
 don't other than doing a GR. 

Well, if you *really* want to do that, I've a technical device to
offer. In the past days, by coincidence, I've worked to setup a
devotee instance on master.d.o, run by myself, with the purpose of
taking polls as we usually vote for GR.

That way, we can ask developers opinion, being sure only DDs vote,
still avoiding taking decisions which might reveal themselves too
constraining in the near future, as Joerg observed.

The reason I stressed really above is twofold:

1) while everything seems to be working fine, there are still some
   rough edges (e.g. the vote graphs do not work properly yet). If you
   intend to go this way, remember that you've been warned :-)

2) I agree that taking the time-based release is a decision which
   the Release Team has the right to take by the authority which the
   project has given them.
   So it should be either this decision, or a GR to overrule.

Practically, if you want me to set it up, I can do that fairly
quickly, but I would love having someone to test it with me. Once it
is ready, I guess it can be announced here (and on -vote).

Let me know if you, or anybody else, like the idea.

Cheers.

-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:40:30AM +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
 Sune Vuorela wrote:
 
 We also need to coordinate such things with the larger packaging teams
 to see wether it fits their schedules and their upstream schedules. For
 example from a KDE point of view, it is around teh worst time.
 
 I guess you are talking about freezing this December and not in general?
 
 Lets discuss the issues regarding KDE and see if we can come to a solution.


With my KDE hat on, I am sure we can disscuss about this and maybe get a
solution, but it would have been nicer if you have discuss this issues with 
any team *before* making any plans.

Ana


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

Hi!

Steve Langasek schrieb:

 Please try to put yourself in our (the press teams) place:
 * In the release teams keynote a major change is announced
 * It is clear, that the topic will be picked up by journalists
 I wonder why this is clear, exactly - I didn't notice journalists in
 the room during the talk, and I doubt they're watching the DebConf
 video feed in realtime.

That was meant in a more general way:  It seemed to me clear, that such
a change would be picked up by the journalists as soon as they get to
know.  I think you agree on that?

So taking into consideration the third point it was just a matter of
time before it would hit the press. And therefore we had the choice to
wait and let journalists pick random stuff (and the risk, that they
don't understood it completely (which journalists don't stop from still
writing)) or do what we did:  Send out an announcement for them to base
their articles on (and hope, that we are easy enough for them).


 Don't you think there was time here to have a developer announcement
 + discussion first, without worrying about the press covering it
 before we'd even posted to d-d-a?

That's not important; independently of whether there was time for mail
to d-d-a or not, it's not the press teams job to keep Developers
informed.  The press teams job is external communication.

So if you want to blame us, then blame us for the being out of sync
regarding internal and external communication.


Best regards,
  Alexander


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Peter Samuelson


[Luk Claes]
 Who would you like to propose a release cycle to the project if not
 the Release Team?

So this is a proposal?

The Vancouver proposal should have taught us a lesson: when you
announce a big change, if you truly intend for it to be a proposal to
be discussed, you have to state this clearly, or people will get upset
at what they see as a fait accompli.

 Why doing a 12 months release to get into the new schedule instead of
 just adopting a 24 months schedule based on the lenny release?

 The main reason is that the Release Team hopes to now have the
 momentum to make a time based freeze work. If we would delay, it will
 very probably mean that many developers 'forget' about what the time
 based freeze is about.

This rationale doesn't seem very plausible, for two reasons.

First, what need is there for momentum?  Announce the freeze will be
in Dec 2010 and, if you think we will forget about it, periodically
remind us via those bits-of-the-RMs style mails.

Second, what is new about time-based freezing?  Wasn't that what we did
for lenny?  The release team had a graduated freeze schedule in place
well in advance, and tried hard to stick to it.  What is different next
time?

There've been a lot of rumors that the 10 months until squeeze freeze
has more to do with trying to benefit Ubuntu LTS, than anything about
momentum.  This unfortunately sounds a lot more plausible to me.  If
it is correct, I'd rather you just said so up front.

(For the record, it still wouldn't make me _happy_.  Cui bono?  I
believe freezing four months before an Ubuntu LTS release would not
benefit Debian at all.  Freezing _after_ an LTS release, or at least
after an LTS freeze, would help Debian quite a lot more.)
-- 
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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Aurelien Jarno

On Wednesday 29 July 2009, Meike Reichle wrote:
 The Debian project has decided to adopt a new policy of time-based
 development freezes for future releases, on a two-year cycle.

I am fine with that, at least I think we should give a chance to this
method. They are some concerns about bad synchronisation with some 
upstream projects, but I am sure we can find some arrangements.

 Freezes
 will from now on happen in the December of every odd year, which means
 that releases will from now on happen sometime in the first half of every 
 even year.  To that effect the next freeze will happen in December
 2009, with a release expected in spring 2010.

I have a lot more problems with that. If this short release cycle had 
been announced a few weeks after the release of Lenny, it would have 
been fine. With such a late announce, a lot of developers and teams have
already made their schedule and plans based on a roughly 2 year release
for Squeeze, and it is really frustrating to have cut them down.

I am also really concerned by the state of the release team. Sid is
opened again for 5 months, and the freeze will happen in 5 months, so we
are just in the middle. If we look a bit what happens on the release
team since the release of Lenny, it has simply been absent. A lot of
mails on debian-release about hints or binNMU are ignored, mails about
transitions are answered very late. The recent MySQL transition is just
an example. Last but not least, the transitions are not really managed
and take a lot of time (for example QEMU is blocked out of testing for 2
months due to the bluez transition).

That's why I would like to ask a single question to the release team: 

What are your plans to ensure the development process of Squeeze
is not slowed down by migration and transitions issues? Or said
otherwise how the release team is going to ensure fast reaction
to the requests on the mailing list and short transitions (more
one week than two months)?

The three new release assistants seems to be a first answer to that, but
I really doubt it is enough.

Cheers,
Aurelien

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Anthony Towns

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:25:01AM +0200, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl wrote:
 Steffen Moeller schrieb:
  Same here. The release team, or the individual that pressed the button for 
  the
  announcement, I suggest to apologize for disturbing our community.
 The text was coordinated within the entire press team, our release
 masters, the head of the technical commitee and the DPL.  IMHO there's
 no need for an apology.

It's remarkable how often people who should be apologising don't think
there's cause for an apology. Personally, I would suggest that the
press team made the mistake here of making an announcement on behalf
of the project of something pretty major that hadn't actually already
been discussed on any developer lists. I'm very surprised that neither
Bdale nor Steve made that point...

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 04:30:07PM +0200, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl wrote:
 That was meant in a more general way:  It seemed to me clear, that such
 a change would be picked up by the journalists as soon as they get to
 know.  I think you agree on that?

Yeah. Journalists do things like that. It's one of the costs of working
in public.

 That's not important; independently of whether there was time for mail
 to d-d-a or not, it's not the press teams job to keep Developers
 informed.  The press teams job is external communication.

Yes, and announcing this as a finished decision before it's even been
discussed amongst the developers is very misleading.

Cheers,
aj, watching master get shutdown as he types


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29 2009, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl wrote:

 Hi!

 Steffen Moeller schrieb:

 Same here. The release team, or the individual that pressed the button for 
 the
 announcement, I suggest to apologize for disturbing our community.

 The text was coordinated within the entire press team, our release
 masters, the head of the technical commitee and the DPL.  IMHO there's
 no need for an apology.

I think that just expands the set of people who owe an apology.

manoj
-- 
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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29 2009, Luk Claes wrote:


 Who would you like to propose a release cycle to the project if not
 the Release Team?

A proposal would have been absolutely appropriate, with
 discussions by various teams as to the best time to freeze.

 To be clear the Release Team cannot just decide what the release cycle
 will be, though we proposed a plan in the team's keynote at DebConf
 and the plan was welcomed by the audience. There were some important
 considerations though.

The audience for the talk was what fraction of the developer set?


 We do not plan to do a yearly release, we plan to have a release about
 every 2 years while having a one time exception for next release by
 freezing this December.

Why? There are development plans underway by folks (and yes, I
 am one of them) where packages will be polished for release about a
 year from now -- and the short release cycle throws a monkey wrench
 into the works.

Why was this not discussed before hand? Are we so beholden to
 canonical that we must slave our releases to their LTS? I thought they
 borrowed our code, not the other way around.

 The main reason is that the Release Team hopes to now have the
 momentum to make a time based freeze work. If we would delay, it will
 very probably mean that many developers 'forget' about what the time
 based freeze is about.

If you want to get the developers behind your release schedule,
 keeping us in the loop is a better idea. As such, it seems to me you
 think that treating developers like mushrooms will have no impact on
 your precious release schedule.  I think you might find that the
 release team can't make releases on its own.

 The developers have had the opportunity and still have the opportunity
 to get stuff done before the release. It's true that developers should
 probably consider to already be careful about what to upload, but
 there is still opportunity to do changes till the freeze.

I see no reason for developers kept out in the cod to do so;
 really.  While the release team might be constitutionally delegated to
 decide when to release on a whim, the developers are also
 constitutionally protected from having to do something they do not want
 to.

manoj
-- 
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entire field of psychology may reduce to biological electrochemistry.
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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29 2009, Nico Golde wrote:

 Hi,
 * Sune Vuorela nos...@vuorela.dk [2009-07-29 12:07]:
 On 2009-07-29, Luk Claes l...@debian.org wrote:
  Who would you like to propose a release cycle to the project if not the 
  Release Team?
 
 What I have seen so far, both from the press announcement and from the
 video, it is not a proposal. it is a decision.
 [...] 
 Why is that such a big problem for you? I mean without 
 stating my opinion about the content of this decision itself 
 I think as it's the release teams job to make such decisions 
 and for myself just trust them that this is the best 
 decision for the project. Everyone is free to join the 


And if I feel that is not the best decision for the users of my
 package? 

manoj
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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29 2009, Steve Langasek wrote:

 On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 01:36:16PM +0200, Bernd Zeimetz wrote:
  count me in.

 me too. Obviously we need to force the release team to talk with the
 important teams in Debian. If i'd have to come up with a GR it would
 probably sound like While we appreciate the plan of fixed freeze cycles,
 the plan to start them in December 2009 is not acceptable for the project.
 We ask the release team to talk with all important teams (kernel, d-i,
 kde, gnome, ftp-master, dsa,) to find an appropriate date.

 Would *you* intend to talk to all of these teams, before starting a GR
 declaring that the proposed timeline is not acceptable to them?

Feh. Do as I say, not as I do.

manoj
-- 
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surest poison is time. -- Emerson, Society and Solitude
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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29 2009, Joerg Jaspert wrote:


 The Debian project did empower the Release Team to manage our
 releases. We did not tell them Manage the release by exactly following
 whatever we did in the past. So they are entirely free to chose the way
 a release is done.

§2.1. General rules
   1. Nothing in this constitution imposes an obligation on anyone to do
  work for the Project.  

So the developers are then within their rights to ignore the
 short first freeze, and work to release whenever the packages are
 really ready.

manoj
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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29 2009, Stephen Frost wrote:

 * Sune Vuorela (nos...@vuorela.dk) wrote:
 I'm hoping that we can convince the release team to change their mind.

 I doubt you can, and I hope you don't.  It could have been announced
 better, but in general I think it's a good thing for Debian.  Please get
 over how it was announced.

Well, yes and no. I think a freeze every two years is a good
 idea. I just do not think that we should freeze in 5 months or so.

manoj
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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29 2009, Steve Langasek wrote:


 (Which is still an important and necessary process, even if some people
 currently feel the release team is shoving this decision down their throats
 - if there are problems with the proposed plan, we can only fix those and
 make the next Debian release as great as possible by discussing them
 respectfully and working together to solve them.)


Really? I doubt that the effort to get the next release of
 debian to a state where we can ock down a out of the box install or
 virtual machine with selinux strict policy is going to get any
 consideration at all.

All the short first release cyce seems to do is to ensure that
 canonical's LTS will always be a more compelling product than a Debian
 release, being slightly newer and improved. Does not sound like a win
 for Debian (just makes us even more irrelevant).

manoj
-- 
It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters. Lucius Annaeus
Seneca (4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Jonathan Wiltshire

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 04:13:17PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
 On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:49:40AM +, Sune Vuorela wrote:
  Do we as developers have other ways to say This is really bad, please
  don't other than doing a GR. 
 
 Well, if you *really* want to do that, I've a technical device to
 offer. In the past days, by coincidence, I've worked to setup a
 devotee instance on master.d.o, run by myself, with the purpose of
 taking polls as we usually vote for GR.

In a broader sense, the ability for proposers of ideas to take a straw
poll in this manner could be valuable for getting an idea of what the
general developer community thinks. In my experience of some lists, it
seems that developers aren't willing to get drawn into a long discussion
but might welcome an opportunity to say 'yes', 'work on it more' or 'no'
and then get back to work.

However, there are many contributors who aren't eligible to vote on GRs
because they are not full DD yet, including me, yet the 'proposal' we're
discussing affects us deeply too. Might you find a way to include us (maybe
the DM keyring is a good start)?


-- 
Jonathan Wiltshire

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Michael Banck

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 04:11:39PM +0200, Ana Guerrero wrote:
 On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:40:30AM +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
  Sune Vuorela wrote:
  
  We also need to coordinate such things with the larger packaging teams
  to see wether it fits their schedules and their upstream schedules. For
  example from a KDE point of view, it is around teh worst time.
  
  I guess you are talking about freezing this December and not in general?
  
  Lets discuss the issues regarding KDE and see if we can come to a solution.
 
 
 With my KDE hat on, I am sure we can disscuss about this and maybe get a
 solution, but it would have been nicer if you have discuss this issues with 
 any team *before* making any plans.

Well, you have to draw the line somewhere - we skipped KDE4 with lenny
and will apparently skip GNOME3 with squeeze.  I understand that some
teams are unhappy not having been contacted before (maybe the security
team being the most important, IMHO), but I don't think there is a
historical precedence (or even clear desire) of the release team
contacting lots of teams beforehand on release timeline decisions.


Michael


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Francesco P. Lovergine

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:38:45AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
 
 Well, yes and no. I think a freeze every two years is a good
  idea. I just do not think that we should freeze in 5 months or so.
 

+1 

-- 
Francesco P. Lovergine


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Stefano Zacchiroli

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 07:42:17PM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
 Ditto. Conferences are a great way to get a bunch of people together
 and kick ideas around, but they are *not* the Annual General Meeting
 of the project.
 
 Issues this sweeping should only be decided via clear, open
 discussion using the established communication channels wfor the
 project. A conference that only a fraction of Debian members can
 attend is not such a channel.

Please, everybody, stop this kind of you evil DebConf attendees have
decided for us all arguments. The time-based freeze has been
announced/proposed during a talk at DebConf; it was fresh news for the
attendees as it was fresh news for everybody else receiving it via
-announce a few hours later.

Cheers.

-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..|  .  |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Martin Wuertele

* Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org [2009-07-29 18:22]:

 Please, everybody, stop this kind of you evil DebConf attendees have
 decided for us all arguments. The time-based freeze has been
 announced/proposed during a talk at DebConf; it was fresh news for the
 attendees as it was fresh news for everybody else receiving it via
 -announce a few hours later.

And that makes it any better?

Yours Martin


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:23:55AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
  me too. Obviously we need to force the release team to talk with the
  important teams in Debian. If i'd have to come up with a GR it would
  probably sound like While we appreciate the plan of fixed freeze cycles,
  the plan to start them in December 2009 is not acceptable for the project.
  We ask the release team to talk with all important teams (kernel, d-i,
  kde, gnome, ftp-master, dsa,) to find an appropriate date.

  Would *you* intend to talk to all of these teams, before starting a GR
  declaring that the proposed timeline is not acceptable to them?

 Feh. Do as I say, not as I do.

Thanks for your helpful contribution to this discussion.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Bernhard R. Link

* Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org [090729 18:22]:
 Please, everybody, stop this kind of you evil DebConf attendees have
 decided for us all arguments. The time-based freeze has been
 announced/proposed during a talk at DebConf; it was fresh news for the
 attendees as it was fresh news for everybody else receiving it via
 -announce a few hours later.

Well, it was not totally fresh news. After all there was already
http://derstandard.at/1246541995003/Interview-Shuttleworth-about-GNOME-30---Whats-good-whats-missing-what-needs-work
(which was linked from slashdot and other sides).

Not sure if this makes the situation much better. But it was not
actually totally surprising.

Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 06:32:03PM +0200, Bernhard R. Link wrote:
 * Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org [090729 18:22]:
  Please, everybody, stop this kind of you evil DebConf attendees have
  decided for us all arguments. The time-based freeze has been
  announced/proposed during a talk at DebConf; it was fresh news for the
  attendees as it was fresh news for everybody else receiving it via
  -announce a few hours later.
 
 Well, it was not totally fresh news. After all there was already
 http://derstandard.at/1246541995003/Interview-Shuttleworth-about-GNOME-30---Whats-good-whats-missing-what-needs-work
 (which was linked from slashdot and other sides).

Call me paranoid, but this looks to me like Ubuntu's cash source knew
more about our release team's innards than Debian itself. This is
wildly disturbing.

Greetings
Marc

-- 
-
Marc Haber | I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany  |  lose things.Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 621 72739834
Nordisch by Nature |  How to make an American Quilt | Fax: *49 3221 2323190


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 04:50:41PM +0200, Michael Banck wrote:
 team being the most important, IMHO), but I don't think there is a
 historical precedence (or even clear desire) of the release team
 contacting lots of teams beforehand on release timeline decisions.
 

For the record, mailKDE plans for the lenny cycle:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2007/04/msg00155.html

If you go to:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2007/04/threads.html

you will see a lot of teams being asked.
I was expecting for something similar when making the plans for the squeeze
cycle.


Ana


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Fathi Boudra

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Michael Banckmba...@debian.org wrote:
 Well, you have to draw the line somewhere - we skipped KDE4 with lenny
 and will apparently skip GNOME3 with squeeze.

This way, we still continue to lose desktop users and the same apply
to stable/server users (Debian stable vs Ubuntu LTS).


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 1:32 PM, Bernhard R. Linkbrl...@debian.org wrote:
 * Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org [090729 18:22]:
 Please, everybody, stop this kind of you evil DebConf attendees have
 decided for us all arguments. The time-based freeze has been
 announced/proposed during a talk at DebConf; it was fresh news for the
 attendees as it was fresh news for everybody else receiving it via
 -announce a few hours later.

 Well, it was not totally fresh news. After all there was already
 http://derstandard.at/1246541995003/Interview-Shuttleworth-about-GNOME-30---Whats-good-whats-missing-what-needs-work
 (which was linked from slashdot and other sides).

It is quite nice to notice that _our_ /dear/ Release Team was in touch
with Ubuntu (nothing wrong with that) but forgot to get in touch with
us ;-)

There's nothing wrong and discuss plans with other projects and share
ideas; what is completely wrong is to not discuss it with us specially
because WE ARE THE ONES THAT ARE GOING TO MAKE IT (NOT) HAPPEN.

 Not sure if this makes the situation much better. But it was not
 actually totally surprising.

Sure it helps; it makes clear the importance we have for RM people.

-- 
Otavio Salvador  O.S. Systems
E-mail: ota...@ossystems.com.br  http://www.ossystems.com.br
Mobile: +55 53 9981-7854 http://projetos.ossystems.com.br


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Gustavo Franco

Otavio, let me make it clear for all readers that you're talking on
behalf of debian installer team.

I'm sure d-i team is very important to RM team. Communication is far
from being a strong quality of this project, with that in mind could
you please try to dissociate a little from the whole thing and raise
points against a time-based release freeze from d-i team point of
view?

I really want to know, but from your previous message all I see is
screw you RM team, you talked to Ubuntu folks and didn't talk to our
direct peers so we will make that fail. I'm sorry if it wasn't the
statement you wanted to share.

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:10 AM, Otavio
Salvadorota...@ossystems.com.br wrote:
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 1:32 PM, Bernhard R. Linkbrl...@debian.org wrote:
* Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org [090729 18:22]:
Please, everybody, stop this kind of you evil DebConf attendees have
decided for us all arguments. The time-based freeze has been
announced/proposed during a talk at DebConf; it was fresh news for the
attendees as it was fresh news for everybody else receiving it via
-announce a few hours later.

Well, it was not totally fresh news. After all there was already
http://derstandard.at/1246541995003/Interview-Shuttleworth-about-GNOME-30---Whats-good-whats-missing-what-needs-work
(which was linked from slashdot and other sides).

It is quite nice to notice that _our_ /dear/ Release Team was in touch
with Ubuntu (nothing wrong with that) but forgot to get in touch with
us ;-)

There's nothing wrong and discuss plans with other projects and share
ideas; what is completely wrong is to not discuss it with us specially
because WE ARE THE ONES THAT ARE GOING TO MAKE IT (NOT) HAPPEN.

Not sure if this makes the situation much better. But it was not
actually totally surprising.

Sure it helps; it makes clear the importance we have for RM people.

--
Otavio Salvador O.S. Systems
E-mail: ota...@ossystems.com.br http://www.ossystems.com.br
Mobile: +55 53 9981-7854 http://projetos.ossystems.com.br

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regards,
-- Gustavo stratus Franco

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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Teemu Likonen

On 2009-07-29 10:11 (-0500), Peter Samuelson wrote:

 I believe freezing four months before an Ubuntu LTS release would not
 benefit Debian at all. Freezing _after_ an LTS release, or at least
 after an LTS freeze, would help Debian quite a lot more.

I believe the same. Mark Shuttleworth said something along the lines of
there's no pressure to agree on everything but a common meta-cycle is
useful base for discussion [1]. I kind of agree but the thing is that
it's a huge gain for Ubuntu's stability even if Debian and Ubuntu
developers don't agree on _anything_. Ubuntu still gets a frozen and
fairly stable system to build their LTS release from. Ubuntu will
probably release newer versions of major packages anyway so they are
(partly) focusing on different bugs. They won't focus on Debian's RC
bugs. So what are the real benefits for Debian?

---
1.  
http://derstandard.at/fs/1246541995003/Interview-Shuttleworth-about-GNOME-30---Whats-good-whats-missing-what-needs-work


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

2009-07-29 Thread Charles Plessy

Le Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 03:08:02AM +0200, Meike Reichle a écrit :
 
 the Debian project commits to provide the possibility to
 skip the upcoming release and do a skip-upgrade straight from Debian
 GNU/Linux 5.0 (Lenny) to Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 (not yet codenamed).

Dear release team,

I would like to add my voice to the concerns about freezing in five monthes and
supporting two releases at the same time.

I first read the press release with interest, because I really appreciated in
the Lenny development cycle to have a serie of step-by-step soft deadlines for
the freeze process. But then I noticed that:

 - The time you allow us for Squeeze development is already half passed.

 - You uniterally decided to increase our work load by requiring us
   to support upgrade from Lenny in 2012.

Moreover, I read from the rumor that the above decision is motivated by some
strategic considerations about synergies with Ubuntu, that are not mentionned
in the press release, nor confirmed by you. I will not feel like staying in
Debian if it becomes a place of taboos where we are expected to read between
the lines and understand the true meaning of what larger organisations mean
in our communications. Let me make clear that there no irony intended: I just
never read about plans to synchronise our efforts with Ubuntu LTS, and there is
simply too much of political correctness in your press release to make it
informational for people who do not have access to the gossips.

In addition, it is clear from the messages posted to that thread that some key
teams were not consulted for the acceleration of the release schedule of
Squeeze. I am starting to wonder if you are making our project in danger.

I urge you to provide us some strong arguments about the benefits of:

 - Unexpectedly shortenning the release cycle,
 - Supporting upgrading from Lenny in 2012.

It has been proposed in the past to make minor stable releases, and
Etch-and-a-half looked like a first step in that direction. Freezing in
December looks like another step, especially with the support of upgrades
accross two releases. I am sure that there is something interesting to build in
that direction, but there is much ambiguity in your decision, as the 2010
release is expected to be more formal than a ‘and-a-half’ release. Yesterday,
Steffen posted some thoughts about new ways to release by tagging, and before
him it was already proposed to freeze only the core of Debian, to make
backports officials, to have a “constantly usable testing”, etc. I would be
very intersted to read your comments on this. Are we going that way, or are we
in contrary committing ourselves to make ’monster releases’ every second year.
(And let other distros innovate on the subject).

Please CC me in case of reply, I am not subscribed to -project.

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes