long term support release

David Mansfield fedora at dm.cobite.com
Wed Jan 23 17:10:50 UTC 2008


On Wed, 2008-01-23 at 12:57 -0300, Horst H. von Brand wrote:
> David Mansfield <fedora at dm.cobite.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 20:24 -0800, Andrew Farris wrote:
> > > David Mansfield wrote:
> > > > I'm fairly new to this list so if this is flame-bait, then I apologize.
> > > > I was wondering whether there is any possibility of having the
> > > > occasional 'long term support' (LTS) release of Fedora (say one every
> > > > two years or something) so that users can settle down with the distro
> > > > and actually become productive with it.  
> > > > 
> > > > Say the LTS cycle is one release every two years (every fourth Fedora
> > > > release), and that the 'long term' for support only lasts for two years
> > > > (which is pretty short to use the term long for, I realize), then there
> > > > would only be one LTS release, and also the most current release to
> > > > worry about at any given time.
> > > > 
> > > > If there is simply not enough teampower to do this, then that's
> > > > understood.
> 
> > > That is essentially what was tried with the fedora legacy project
> > > (supporting eol fedora releases for a longer term) but there was not
> > > enough interest and support to keep it going.  It did support RH9 and
> > > FC releases up to FC5 I think?
> 
> > Almost the same.  A few differences:
> > - that project was 'glued on' to an existing process instead of a part
> > of it
> 
> No... it was one of the projects of the (not-RedHat) Fedora almost from the
> start. They supported pre-Fedora Red Hats.
> 
> > - they came into the game with a number of releases to support already
> 
> True.
> 
> > - they wanted to support every release
> 
> The idea was to support only those versions where interest was high enough
> to support the longer term maintenance. Each version had its fans, but none
> had enough longer term interest (say, more than 6 months after official
> EOL) to keep them going. Perhaps the latest Red Hat (9) had a bit more, but
> I suspect that had more to do with the name change than any objective
> reason.
> 
> > I think Fedora LTS would be:
> > - planned and built into the Fedora cycle and finally implemented
> > - only releases planned in advance to be LTS releases would be LTS
> > - there would only be one (or two) outstanding LTS releases at a time
> 
> As was offered, propose a SIG and gather people (lots of them!) to do the
> (hard, non-glamorous) work.

If such a proposal was made, it would involve changes to the workflow
and cycle management of the core releases, even if the bulk of the
support work is to be done by a separate group.  Would such a proposal
have a chance?

David





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