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It's Not Time for OSS Release Cycle Synchronization
Bakkies Botha writes "Ars Technica weighs in with some detailed analysis on the controversial issue of open source release cycle synchronization. Ars explains how time-based release cycles work and takes a close look at how the release management strategy suggested by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth would impact open source software projects. Ars concludes that Shuttleworth's proposal isn't currently viable and argues that the BFDL is overstating the potential to simplify development with better version control tools. Ars also examines a counter-proposal offered by KDE developer Aaron Seigo and explains how it enables users to get the same benefits of synchronization without disrupting upstream development."
When I first read of Shuttleworth's proposal, I figured that it might be easier to start the sync project among the community distributions which feed into the commercial ones. However, thinking further, there seems to be more issues involved and I'm starting to think that it might not be that great of an idea, or terribly important.
the Linux-based wing of the f/oss community in particular is reaching a point where they finally have a large swath of people who are merely "end users," and whose biggest gripes aren't about some flaw in some obscure patch to imblib (for example), but are "i can't play dvds out of the box, so linux is t3h gay."
For whatever reason, people have decided that a holy quest to "destroy Microsoft" and encourage wide-spread adoption of gnu/linux-based operating systems would be totally awesome. Ubuntu is geared at those "new recruits," with large amounts of hand-holding and media support. Mint is even better with its media support, but completely lacks dev tools if you install from the live image -- seriously, what sort of *nix system thinks you don't need a C compiler by default and makes you go looking for it in the repositories?
Trying to sync up Red Hat or SuSE who have more or less gotten out of the consumer market and are targeting professional users - developers, engineers, etc - in the workplace environment with some candy-for-kids distro is frankly a little weird.
The goal seems to be to increase homogeny across distributions - however, homogeny between ubuntu and rhel? quite frankly, why?
The systems are targeted at different sets of people with different requirements and philosophies. Holding off on releasing Red Hat until Ubuntu is ready, which requires KDE and GNOME to sync up (more or less) sounds a little ridiculous and over-the-top.
If FreeBSD were to wait until something they were trying to adopt from OpenBSD were ready, certain individuals with well known personality flaws very well might pull some sort of stunt just to make the others look bad. Given how high emotions seem to run between KDE and GNOME people, I wouldn't be surprised if one did something to spite the other, which then filtered down to Ubuntu and RH getting the shaft and looking dumb.
The "community" is a whole lot bigger than it was 10-15 years ago, a bit colder and less friendly to boot. I have serious doubts that in the current climate this could be pulled off, even if something were to be gained by all parties -- which again, I don't think is the case anymore.
Just my $0.02; your exchange rate my vary.
Either the greater collaboration would find bugs like the Debian ssh fiasco quicker,
or every Linux distribution would be affected by the same bug.
The meme is dead, long live the meme!
A counter-proposal by Aaron Seigo? The guy behind Plasma, and the man most directly responsible for the total fucking up of the KDE 4 release cycle? KDE 4 is in shambles because of his ideas about release management. He was still adding basic features to Plasma after KDE 4.0 was already tagged a release candidate. The guy is a loon when it comes to release management. I'd rather have Ballmer dictate open-source release management than Seigo.
Shuttleworth's proposal makes perfect sense for the Linux Distros that just repackage the upstream work. But, it does not make sense for the Distros that do a lot of original work. Tim S
If there were Godwin Awards, parent post would be a contender...
When there is a set release date, responsible developers will keep it in mind and change plans as the freeze approaches: things that are unlikely to be finished are put off to the next release; efforts are concentrated on bullet proofing what can done. Developers that can't or won't take on this kind of responsible change of focus are going to produce crappy software no matter what (irresponsible behavior is a quality of the developer that affects everything he touches; it is not an attribute of blocks of code).
Maybe there should be Godwin Awards...