[PHILOSOPHY] Stability and Release Schedules

[Guy Fraser]

On Thu, 2006-27-04 at 15:52 -0700, John Wendel wrote:
> Here's your chance to slap me up side of the head!
> 
> Reading the Debian thread (and others) has made me wonder why Fedora 
> has to have "releases" at all. Why not have a continuously evolving 
> distribution? One would start by downloading an "installer system" 
> that would then use the existing mechanisms (yum, whatever) to update 
> itself. From this point on, why would one need "releases"? Just keep 
> releasing updates and new packages exactly as things are done now.
> 
> I know there must be something wrong with this scenario; would someone 
> like to hit me with a clue stick.
> 
This thread is to long too read every entry. In case nobody has 
mentioned it ;

The reason for releases is to allow for significant changes 
to fundamental libraries that could break many things or 
require almost every package to be updated at the same time.

I am not completely familiar with Debian, but other OSes use 
a similar development/stable branch system. You may have 
misread or been mislead, because most similar systems still
have releases for the reasons I stated above, but the only 
time the releases change is when a significant change is 
made, and not based on a time schedule. Periodically such 
systems also have patch releases that fix security or 
stability issues and require significant package updates.