Re: RFD: Kernel release numbering

Linus Torvalds
2005-03-04T20:41:48Z

On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
>
> It might still be worth a try, especially since so many people are
> convinced this is the way to go (your fault or not is not the point).

Making releases is actually a fair bit of work. Not the script itself, but
just deciding and trying to synchronize. The fatc that people won't really
appreciate it anyway, and just complain about "that's not stable anyway"
just makes me even less interested.

The undeniable _fact_ in this discussion is that we're merging a lot of
patches - which is good, because that's how we keep 2.6.x relevant, and
not just a dead branch. And that is also what makes it fundamentally
different from 2.4.x, and I think a lot of people are just ignoring that
fact.

If people want a stable branch, they have to freeze their own thing. I and
Andrew do a lot of work to keep 2.6.x releases high-quality, and I think
we've been very successful in it too. The _whining_ from people who don't
realize that we can't just stop running (because if we did, quality would
go _down_ when we're then overwhelmed afterwards) is really quite grating,
though.

Linus