Why Debian release schedules don't matter

By Sam Varghese
Friday, 06 February 2009 04:52

Opinion and Analysis

We all love it when things run on time. There are certain things which need to happen when the clock strikes the hour - buses and trains need to arrive, a cron job on your server needs to spark some script or the other to life, your kids need to be at school.
Nothing wrong with wanting things to happen this way. Nothing wrong with being fussy about punctuality either. In fact, I'll go a step further and say that one can even be fanatical about such things with no ill-effects.

However, problems arise when you try to apply that same idea to a project like Debian, an organic, democratic entity that pulls together people from numerous countries, a total in excess of 1000, to produce the best GNU/Linux distribution going.

It's amazing that some people, who should actually have some kind of better understanding of the nature of human interaction if they've been around as long they claim, refuse to acknowledge that release schedules can slip when a project of this nature is cooperating to whip up software that can support more architectures than any other distribution.

I think part of the problem is that many people have come to the point where they feel a sense of entitlement - they feel that they must have something on time. Never mind that this is a volunteer project, never mind that this is software for which one pays not a frigging cent, never mind that nobody asked you to use this software in the first place.

No, scream this bunch, we want our Debian release and it had bloody well better be on time. Else, horror of horrors, people may well stop using Debian.

I'm not sure whether all those who shout themselves hoarse about release schedules use Debian at all. If they did, they would realise that they are indulging in activity that makes them something of a laughing stock.

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