Lifetime of FreeBSD branches

[Scott Long]

Francisco Reyes wrote:

> On Tue, 24 May 2005, Scott Long wrote:
> 
>> Again, please don't take the abrupt switch to 6.0 to mean that 5.x is
>> flawed or that 6.x will also have a short lifespan.  The real purpose
>> of the switch is nothing but positive; it'll keep us focused and prevent
>> us from overreaching and overextending ourselves.  It's a very good
>> and very postive strategy.
> 
> 
> So why have a 6.X naming convention to begin with?
> Why not just stay in 5.X name wise?

I really should have given 5.3 the name of 6.0.  I considered
it at the time, but decided not to for some insane reason.

> 
> Is there a thread that sheds some light on that topic?
> Is the goal to have a new major branch every 2 years?

Yes.  This will allow us to pace our major development projects much
better than we have in the past.  Thus, a ".0" release becomes less
of a major event with lofty goals, and more of a snapshot of where
our technology is at the time.  There will still be goals and major
projects, but I don't want us to go through another exercise of spending
4+ years on loosely defined goals that grow out of bounds.

Scott