On Sun, Jan 16, 2005 at 09:14:45PM -0800, Bob Miller wrote: > T. Joseph CARTER wrote: > > > Debian's hit the three year mark between woody and sarge. The latter has > > yet to be released. The time between releases is following a trend of > > getting significantly longer. > > All software projects follow that trend. As a project matures, > several factors all push toward longer release cycles.
OpenBSD still does a "stable" release every six months. > * The user base gets larger and more diverse. They have greater > constraints on scheduling upgrades as the program works itself > into more of their infrastructure. They also have higher costs > if the new release introduces bugs, which pushes for longer and > more complete testing cycles. that's the problem with trying to do stuff for other people. > * The code base grows. As it grows, it becomes more fragile so that > changes must be made more carefully. System-wide changes take > longer to implement simply because there's more code to rewrite. it only becomes for fragile if the additions are fragile. > * The development group, if it's lucky, creates more process to > prevent destabilization. The process slows development. If the > development group doesn't create more process, you get the > situation where the code doesn't run at all (or even compile at > all) for long periods. That REALLY slows development. that's the problem with project management being too democratic. > * The development group usually grows as the program gain success. > In FOSS, developers find the project. In commercial development, > a successful program gets a bigger budget. In either case, more > people add more communication overhead and are able to break > things quicker but fix things more slowly. (The Mythical Man > Month is the classic text on that phenomenon.) not if people breaking stuff are properly reprimanded. > Look at the release dates for Linux from 0.1 through 2.6.10 for an > example. Also look at Windows 3.0 through XP SP2. MacOS 1.0 through > 10.2. Apache 1.0 through 2.0.52. gcc 1.0 through 3.3.5. Just about > anything. `cept OpenBSD. -- <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
