Proposal: Rolling Release

[Arthur Pemberton]

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 7:42 AM, Eric Springer <erikina at gmail.com> wrote:
> Fedora has always lead the progress of FOSS by closely following
> upstream and making non-trivial contributions. I see this is a great
> strength, and like many other people it's my primary reason for using
> it. But it's not without trade-offs, such as giving Fedora a
> perception of being 'beta' software and balancing new software without
> burning the large user base is not easy either.

Yes. That is a fact. There is almost no good way to tell people who
don't like this "get used to it". Someone has to do this. Someone has
to be the "custodian" and it seems like we (Fedora) are it. And I feel
that we should be proud of our role on the frontlines.

I think that as long as we do not burn these users away from Linux as
a whole, this is okay.

> This hit home today, after being impressed with the work you guys have
> done with plymouth, I did a quick Google search[1] to find out a
> little more. The first result is a "Ubuntu brainstorm" page[2] about
> implementing it in their own distribution and the second comment is "I
> support the idea but I do think that it should only be considered
> after Fedora has done all the dirty work of getting it to work".

I feel like this is something for Fedora to be proud of. It is a
community, and different parts have their niches, this seems to be
Fedora's own, and we should be proud of it.

> This
> is no way intended as a criticism of a Ubuntu, but it's a realization
> that distributions like Ubuntu are able to offer a better user
> experience by using stable software on a longer support cycle.

And this is good thing. Ubuntu has not shown themselves capable of
doing anything else but this, so let the, have that. If anything, we
need an easier migration path between Fedora and Ubuntu.

> So what I propose ...

I read through everything, but just wanted to shorten the email a bit..
This all sounds good, but it seems entirely like a good idea, which
needs a lot of resources and additional man power to do. Without the
added man power, we would likely be taking away from what makes Fedora
Fedora as is today.

We are Fedora, do we need to be Ubuntu as well?

-- 
Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin
( www.pembo13.com )