For those who care about stable updates

From: Martin Schulze <joey-AT-infodrom.org> To: Debian Development Announcements <debian-devel-announce-AT-lists.debian.org> Subject: For those who care about stable updates Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 11:32:07 +0100 Archive-link: Article, Thread

I'm sorry to announce this but you'll have to find a new person who works on updating Debian stable and who is willing to cope with black holes and ftpmasters. I'm sick of being left in the void. I'm sick of ftpmasters not answering mails from the stable release manager to negotiate a timeline. I'm sick of ftpmasters suddenly creating arbitrary preconditions for stable updates. I'm sick of having to ask again and again and being constantly blocked by them. I'm sick of this entire situation. It makes me ill, angry and utterly frustrated. It causes me being frustrated of Debian and unable to work on other issues, needing a rest more often that planned. I should do better with my limited life. Hence, I give up. Congratulations. I have worked on updates to the stable Debian distribution since 2001 after I noticed that nobody is trying to integrate security updates into the once released distribution so that the archive does not contain tons of known security updates. I've tried to get stable updates done on a regular basis but miserably failed. It's is now five years since I started working on such updates and often they've been a pain for me once they were ready, and also a source of utter grief and frustration. Every once in a while the problems escalated and were discussed on mailing lists. After that, an update was possible. However, I was exhausted and frustrated. That's not a healthy situation to continue working on. Since James Troup as ftpmaster rejected my recent request to become an ftpmaster in order to be able to implement the changes on my own, and since ftpmasters don't allow new people to become ftpmasters, and since the changes Anthony Towns is proposing and implementing won't change the requirement for an ftpmaster for stable updates, it is very clear to me that the situation is not going to improve in the future. Hence, I'm giving up. Of course, I'd support a new stable release manager in the beginning. The tools I've used are public anyway and so are the data. Both could be used as a basis. Regards, Joey -- MIME - broken solution for a broken design. -- Ralf Baechle