Stabe vs. Release vs Devel Was: KDE update - no testing period?

[D Canfield]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> D Canfield wrote:
>
>>   Why not take the debian methodology to the extreme and just have a 
>> testing and core repository with no releases?   There's no interest 
>> in getting or keeping any end users, right?
>
> Avoid rhetoric since it doesnt help at all.
>

It frustrates me that you dodged this question as "rhetoric" when it is 
actually the question that has bothered me the most. 

If there are no rules or policies regarding API/ABI/Version 
Number/Whatever stability in the releases, then really what *is* the 
point of a release?  As the policies stand right now, there is nothing 
preventing all of the FC4 packages being pushed into the FC3 tree.  
Instinctively that sounds ridiculous, but given the package churn in FC4 
of even major components like KDE, we're getting closer and closer to 
that. 

So again I ask what the point is of a release?  What makes FC3 and FC4 
different?  Why not just have a development tree where things are 
developed and tested, and a stable tree where packages are then merged 
once people are happy with them?  Then just make sure the whole thing 
can be installed from scratch once every 3 months and stop wasting 
resources on release management, updating multiple releases, fedora 
legacy, etc.   It seems to me that it would be much less confusing than 
the current non-policies for releases.

DC