Quoting François Téchené (2019-03-19 19:38:23)
The question we keep asking ourselves is : Will the defaults work best for the majority of human beings? The idea here is to avoid proposing different flavors for different tastes but to focus on defaults that targets the majority.
Ok, so "our users" is one target, not several.
Not "enterprise customers" needing particularly stable system and "existing users" expecting a constant flow of updates from Debian testing.
All users are in same boat, and the boat goes in the direction that the majority need to go.
Makes good sense.
[details on pushing upstream snipped - we all agree on that!]
So if we decide to go for a stable long term release of the core OS, one solution for us would be :
[...]
- To be able to release GNOME upgrades to our users in a not too
long frequency (maximum 1 year) ideally the 6 months GNOME release cycle.
What we can do now, with our current manpower and infrastructure, is follow Debian closely - which means a general feature update of our system not every 6-12 months, but either every day or every 2-4 years.
We can develop different/smarter infrastructure and later when that is done we can choose a 3rd path similar to Ubuntu, of a 6-12 month release cycle meaning that we deviate further from Debian at times. Later, not now, with our current infrastructure. If we want such 3rd path.
And/or we can hire more people to help maintain PureOS, and later when they are settled in and efficient with our infrastructure, we can deviate further from Debian even before we have different/smarter infrastructure in place, by pouring more man hours into the things now covered mostly by Debian - including security tracking and regression testing and bootstrapping new packages and translating and and and... If we want to deviate more from Debian.
For now we can choose between 2 Debian tracks: Stable or Testing.
I think this is a critical time for us in term of user experience so we must not rush in the decisions and make sure we find a good compromise.
Reason it is kinda urgent to reflect on this now is that _if_ we decide to hit the break and slow down to tracking Debian stable, then we cannot take that decision at arbitrary points during the Debian development cycle: We need to decide before Debian releases the next stable release, likely within few months from now, or continue fast-paced tracking Debian testing until the next window 2-4 years from now.
- Jonas