Back in April 2008, Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth pitched the idea of major open source projects synchronising their release cycles on a 6 month period. Projects like gcc, the Linux kernel, GNOME, KDE, as well as the distributions, would work out an acceptable release schedule. It would allow for easier collaboration between the various projects, and hardware vendors would be better able to support Linux since all major distributions would ship with the same kernel version.
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Member since:2007-02-17
Ubuntu's timetable is practically the same as Gnome's timetable, its not something they pulled our of their ass. So what he is suggesting is that All projects adhere to a set timetable and release cycle that a major OS project already uses and that many projects revolving around it use as well. Its a sound idea, but because it was suggested by the Ubuntu community its not valid. As a community we contribute a lot to the linux landscape, even if Canonical as a company may not. The huge user base of ubuntu has spawned many oss projects that are built and maintained on Ubuntu, but because some of these projects aren't huge upstream projects they get overlooked and Ubuntu doesn't contribute?
Aaron has no intention of making the KDE project use a steady release cycle, he has stated as much before, when Mark suggested the same thing for KDE a while back. I say regular less feature centric releases would be a benefit to KDE, but Aaron thinks otherwise and is willing to be an ass to support his opinion.
Ubuntu may not have a lot of upstream developers, but like I've stated many times on this site. Ubuntu's popularity doesn't translate to money, they are popular, but unlike RedHat or Novell, they have very little resources that are not coming out of the pocket of one man. So its nice for Aaron to say that Ubuntu should contribute more upstream, but the reality is that Ubuntu doesn't have the resources to do such a thing.
What makes Ubuntu great, is the fact that in just the few short years that they have been making releases, they have changed the landscape of consumer oriented(desktop) Linux. Anyone who denies that is lying to themselves. They must have contributed something to make such a huge impact in so little time. It's not about what they contribute but how. Many projects that started on other distros were fostered and nurtured by the huge Ubuntu community. Ubuntu contributes by increasing adoption rate and awareness of Linux, that should be more than enough, imo.
Member since:2005-06-29
This is not entirely true. MArk isn't suggesting that everyone adapts to Ubuntu's/GNOME's schedule. In fact, he clearly stated Ubuntu is willing to change its release cycle if needed.
Member since:2005-07-06
Same difference. Whether it's Ubuntu's or Gnome's timetable it doesn't solve the problems.
All projects have their own goals for each release, and as Aaron pointed out, for projects who have a timetable of major structural changes and want to get more far-reaching features implemented, which happens from time to time, a six month release cycle is an total ass.
Aaron is spot on to be sceptical about strict time based releases. Quite often, and Gnome has suffered terribly from this, major features and changes that should be made are continuously put on the backburner for future releases because the next release just comes up far too fast. Just because you can make a release, it doesn't mean that there's anything actually in it. From that we get the suggestion of better branching so that features can be backported more easily. It's all in the articles.
KDE does have time-based releases actually, but they're not willing to be strict about them because open source development just isn't like that.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Mark is basically trying to get projects to synchronise with Ubuntu's six month release cycle - for Ubuntu's downstream benefit.
If Mark wants some kind of coordinated release mechanism then he's going to have to put something into it. Aaron suggested one way he might be able to do that, as it is not up to upstream projects to compromise their feature list to stick to Ubuntu's six month release cycle.
It's Mark who's asking for this.