http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090729
I have used Debian since several years now and have always been either on the ‘testing’ or the ‘sid’ releases on my desktops / laptops. I never felt the need to switch to ‘stable’ as even sid was stable enough for me for my regular usage (with a few scripts to keep out buggy new debs).
I’ve seen, over time, people move to Ubuntu though. That means people really like Debian but they also wanted ‘stable’ releases at predictable times. If one stayed on a Debian stable release, ‘bleeding edge’ or ‘new software’ was never possible. When a new Debian release would be out, upstreams would’ve moved one or two major releases ahead.
So Ubuntu captured the desktop share away from Debian. The server folks wouldn’t complain for lack of new features. So would this really make any difference?
Will the folks who migrated to Ubuntu go back to Debian?
(I’ve since moved majority of my machines to Fedora though — but that’s a different topic)
>They have moved to time based FREEZES. Releases are unlikely to be time based or atleast there is no implication it is going to be
>They do mention releases will happen first half of every other year (even-numbered year)
>And to add to that: Debian's known for slipping release dates. So it's possible they don't actually release on time.
But once frozen, what's left other than QA to actually do the release? They might as well just get it out and focus on the next one.
>Reading the thread, I see release team explicitly denying that they are doing time based release in the middle of a heated discussion.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.announce/45
>Oh the threads will continue to grow
They'll have a vote, this thing will be shot down and things will be as usual. But again there'll be some "corporate pressure" and there'll be some new plan.
Debian's kind of lost already.
>We haven't given up yet! Probably, only true community/volunteer flavor in market
>Most of your upstream sources are heavily funded by organizations like Red Hat anyway. Every major distribution is influenced by organizations. There is purist attitude about voluntarism necessary.