Hear, Hear! Oyez, Oyez! Mais Oyez donc!!!
I wish I could justify requoting the whole thing. Stephane is IMNSHO
rignt on the money on this one (and I choose my metaphor carefully ;-).
Listen up or watch Linux die, O ye brilliant kernel developers!
Well do I remember Linus deciding to let 2.0 loose on the world because
it seemed the only way to get width in the wide beta testing. I don't
know if he was wrong, but the subsequent release flurry (software du
jour, quoi) alienated an incredible number of the Great Unwashed whose
support we sorely need to make this thing survive the M$ juggernaut and
keep growing. (So ok, I'm at best half washed, and that's maybe why I
feel strongly about it: I have to keep my boss's boxen doing their thing
and it gets messy when the "stable" kernel releases keep dying under
me and the users intone the mantra "NT, NT, NT...")
The real problem, and it's not at all an easy one, is that stabilizing
isn't nearly as good fun as developing. To keep BillG thinking Linux is
the real competitor, there have to be reasonably frequent stable
(really) releases; but to keep the folks who build Linux having the fun
that makes it worth building, there has to be scope to play and break
things. The two things got mixed in the 2.0/2.1 series, I think, and
we're paying.
Stephane's been a real contributor, I'm just an admiring user; listen to
him, if you don't want to listen to me!
-- | G r e g L o u i s | pgp:email key@PublicKey.com | | http://www.interlog.com/~glouis | id glouis@dynamicro.on.ca | | Ne te fais jamais indiquer le chemin | 2B C6 4F 5A 66 57 FF 4E | | par qui ne sait pas s'egarer! | 9F BC 5D AA 23 04 76 A9 |