Beta packages within stable releases

[John Poelstra]

Ken Chilton said the following on 10/10/2009 12:57 PM Pacific Time:
> Dear members of the Fedora Board,
> 
> I wish to encourage you to reconsider the policies regarding packages in 
> Fedora releases.  Currently, within Fedora 11, there are key packages 
> being distributed which are still in beta or otherwise unstable 
> condition with matching, prior stable packages available.  Fedora 11, as 
> best as I can tell, is not a beta or development release.
> 


I completely agree with you and think this issue should be addressed.  I 
had a similar experience when a new MediaWiki update was added to Fedora 
10 which required going to the command line, copying some files around 
and then running a script to update the database schema.  This did not 
meet my expectations of an update to a stable release either.

As much as I would like the board to address this issue I want to be 
careful that this is an issue that the board should be deciding.  In the 
past we have tried to be careful about not taking on issues that are 
FESCo's responsibility.  Since this has to do specifically with 
packaging issues and how/when/where those packages are released this 
issue might actually belong to FESCo.

What are the views of other members of FESCo or the board?

John