CLARITY re: challenge: end of life for 6.2 is premature withbuggy 6.3

[Robert Watson]

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008, Andy Kosela wrote:

> Redhat/CentOS is more reliable here as backports involves both security and 
> bug fixes, plus even new hardware enhancements.

In the FreeBSD environment, we call the place that gets a blend of security 
and bug fixes, plus new minor feature and driver enhancements "-STABLE", and 
the releases that pick up these changes "point releases".  They happen more 
requently and with less risk than major releases, but still see enough 
development to represent functional improvements.

I guess here's my concern: we offer a spectrum of choice for "I want the most 
bleeding edge" to "I want no feature changes, just security fixes", and 
several points in between.  We can argue about the exact placement of this 
points, but the reality is that the balance we have today seems to work well 
for many developers and users, and reflects a fairly carefully planned use of 
the available revision control and distribution technology.

The place for volunteers to come in is where they see an obvious niche for 
improvement -- for example, a few years ago this guy named Colin Percival 
turned up with a binary update system.  After a couple of years of 
enhancement, breaking it in, etc, it's now a standard tool for maintaining 
FreeBSD systems, and he's our security officer.  Similar opportunities exist 
for offering easier updates to packages, etc, but require people who have a 
clear need and the technical ability to do the work to turn up and do it.

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge