Developers at Canonical have been considering a completely new release cycle for Ubuntu in which the interim releases that occur every six months would be dumped in favor of "rolling releases" that happen far more frequently but not necessarily on a set schedule.

Last month, Canonical VP Rick Spencer suggested that Canonical "take a monthly snapshot of the development release, which we support only until the next snapshot." Users could then choose either the Long Term Support (LTS) edition that comes out every two years, the monthly snapshot, or the absolute newest build, which could conceivably be updated every day.

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth has now weighed in publicly on the matter, saying he is skeptical. "Rolling releases are not real releases," he wrote in his blog last week. Shuttleworth didn't completely rule out a change, but said a move to a faster release cycle can't happen until tough questions are answered:

The problem for me is straightforward: a rolling release isn’t actually a release at all. It offers little certainty for those who need certainty. And we essentially accommodate the need for daily crack with our development releases, which have become highly usable (for developers) because of the strong commitment the Canonical and community teams made to daily quality throughout the release cycle. … In the web-led world, software is moving faster than ever before. Is six months fast enough? So I think it IS worth asking the question: can we go even faster? Can we make even MORE releases in a year? And can we automate that process to make it bulletproof for end-users? That’s where I think we should steer the conversation on rolling releases: Can we make the update process from point to point really bulletproof? Upgrading today is possible, but to keep the system clean over multiple successive upgrades requires an uncommonly high level of skill with APT.

Can we strengthen the definition of point releases in the LTS so that interim releases are obviously less relevant?

Can we do a reasonable amount of release management on, say, MONTHLY releases that they are actual releases rather than just snapshots? Daily quality has made the Ubuntu development release perfectly usable for developers. That’s a huge accomplishment. Now let’s think carefully about the promises we’re making end-users, and see if it isn’t time to innovate again, just as we innovated when we created Ubuntu on a six month cadence.

Spencer had recommended moving to the rolling release model immediately. Ubuntu development must speed up for the mobile age, as Ubuntu is planning to eventually have one OS covering phones, tablets, and desktops, he wrote. Given Shuttleworth's skepticism, however, it seems unlikely Ubuntu is on the verge of any major change to its long-used six-month release cycle.