Proposals like moving to a rolling release are an attempt to evolve our existing processes to new realities and requirements, but I think we need to go one step farther and question why we are so tied to our distro model, where apps and platform are tightly bound.
The convenience of "one-stop shopping" has now become a bottleneck for app deployment. Most other platforms appear to separate out delivering the platform (usually as a unified whole) from the applications (usually individually). It's an easier model to understand and better reflects the skills and expertise of most programmers.
I agree the distro model was good and necessary before Linux (and Ubuntu) were popular platforms. In those days, we needed distro developers to bring apps to the platform to entice users. My claim is that we've since solved the chicken and egg problem. We *have* an enticing platform that attracts app developers from weekend hobbyists to giants like Valve.
'Solved' might be a little strong here, but I think I agree that there's enough critical mass that Ubuntu now makes it into the short list of platforms developers might support.
Let's spend our time improving plumbing like making app backports to the stable platform easy or enabling system updates on an embedded device in a sane manner or maintaining library APIs across stable releases. Let's figure out how to decouple and disentangle our apps from our platform. Let's stop trying to have (and do) it all.
Yup. I would say that most professional application developers would love Ubuntu to be a stable predictable platform that finds the "right" tradeoff between "newness" and "risk of breaking". This includes the developer platform (the computer I write code with) and the delivery platform (the computer my customer runs my app on). As a developer, I can live with some breakage if its infrequent and I get the new stuff. As I understand it, the new automated testing regime gets us there ... eventually.
Putting my "app developer" hat on, I want to focus on writing my application as much as possible and "delegating" the grotty plumbing to Ubuntu. This includes installing onto a stable platform. I'd like Ubuntu to tell me how to create an installation procedure (in English please). I don't want the Microsoft model, where people specialize just in writing installers and can pay thousands of dollars USD for the best tools to do it (https://shop.flexerasoftware.com/en/productselect.aspx). I'm not sure I want to be a captive of an "app store" ala Apple or Google, especially if it slows me down, or is too expensive, or causes my wonderful application to disappear in the crowd.
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