(2008-11-12) Fedora 发布周期：再长些？再短些？

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Fedora 10 即将在 11 月 25 日发布——比预期晚了一些。延迟发布并不少见，即使不是因为服务器被攻陷的缘故(个中细节至今无人知晓？)。 Fedora 10 看起来相当值得等待，不过 Fedora Project 并没有一起等到发布之后再筹划下次发布。邮件列表上已经有很多与下次发布相关的讨论，字里行间透露出 Fedora 领袖们感到的压力。

最近的一个唱衰 Fedora 10 的视频在 Fedora 项目内部并不讨好。不过 Fedora 项目内部最大的怨言却是针对另一件事：Fedora 开发者理应为自己的成果得到尊重和感谢。看看 Fedora 领袖 Paul Frields 怎么说：

当我看到主持人说 Fedora 有很多特性早已出现在 Ubuntu 8.10 里时，我不禁犯愁了。他说得没错，可是这些明明都是 Fedora 贡献者做的啊！我们必须强调这个事实。

后续的讨论中，很多 Fedora 开发者表现出一种情绪，觉得其他发行版——尤其是 Ubuntu——在“窃取”Fedora 的荣耀，手段只不过是早一点点发布成果。这也不是没有先例，当年 Novell 之所以闭门开发 XGL，也是为了避免让 Ubuntu 抢占先机。不过 Fedora 的开发不会走向封闭——Fedora 的天性就是开放的。Fedora 有别的办法。

最重要的一点： Fedora Project 希望可以做到让全世界了解，自己的开发者在做什么。特性列表可以在正式发布前，就将信息发布出去。其他方法还有更多的博客，更多地联系新闻站点，诸如此类。项目甚至还提出了一个营销时间表提案，计划在发布周期的合适时机，推出正确的营销举措。

前 Fedora 领袖 Max Spevack 的不同的建议：

如果因为我们的发布时间表的缘故，“特性”和“领先”受到了影响，而媒体并不理解上游是哪里(像这次 Fedora 发生的事)，结果使得 Ubuntu 得以提前发布新版本，并得到媒体的赞扬，那么 Fedora 营销组应当劝说 Fedora 董事会调整我们的“劳动节”和“万圣节”发布周期，让 Fedora 可以在 Ubuntu 之前发布。

这样下去可能带来发行版的竞赛，导致更短的周期和质量的下降。很难想象先行者有如此大的营销优势，应该还有别的办法。

短期内 Fedora 不会尝试“首发”。实际上，在最近一封邮件Fedora 11 发布周期提案中，发布反而被推迟了。过去 Fedora 应对发布推迟的做法是缩短下次发布周期，期望可以回到正常的时间表。不过在 Fedora 11 中，“劳动节”不再是硬性目标。

缩短 Fedora 11 发布周期的主要原因如下：

Fedora 11 对于 Red Hat 企业版 Linux (RHEL)非常重要。RHEL 6 将使用 Fedora 10 和 Fedora 11 作为特性的基础。很多上游内容需要进入这两个版本中。

因此如果 Fedora 11 周期缩短，就可能无法接纳所有 RHEL 6 特性。这对 Red Hat 而言是无法接受的。既然 Red Hat 赞助了 Fedora，Red Hat 的问题也就成了 Fedora 的问题。另外，Red Hat 很多核心开发者需要参与 Fedora 下个周期的开发，以完善那些属于 RHEL 6 的特性。如果缩短开发周期，Fedora 将无法从这些开发者那里得到足够关注。只要可能的话，Fedora 会尽量利用 RHEL 团队的优势。

因此这份提案建议 Fedora 11 应当有充足的，六个月的周期，到六月初再发布。Fedora 12 则会缩短，以实现正常的周期。提案希望早做规划，面对短周期可以有充分准备。Jesse Keating 建议项目 “在 Fedora 12 中可以更多地关注修正问题而不是大量加入新特性。” 那，我们之中的愤世嫉俗者也许会说，Fedora 11 又会塞满各种不成熟的东西，供 RHEL 测评，而 Fedora 12 才会稳定下来——不过你们的小编可不会这样想。

关于提案的最初反应大都是正面的，因此事情也许就会如此决定下来。一些 Fedora 开发者大概会认为，再次迟于 Ubuntu 发布，项目在公共关系上又遭破坏；不过有些事情更为重要。由于“有些事情”可以看作“有足够时间将更多特性带入下个稳定版”，这总比与 Ubuntu 吵架更重要吧。

原文见 Fedora release cycles: longer or shorter?
By Jonathan Corbet November 12, 2008

The Fedora 10 release is currently planned for November 25 – somewhat later than had been originally intended. Delays in Fedora releases are certainly not unheard-of, even when the project isn’t coping with a major compromise of its fundamental infrastructure (the full story of which, it should be noted, still has not been told). Fedora 10 looks like it will be worth the wait, but the project is not waiting for the release to start thinking about its upcoming release cycles. A couple of discussions related to this topic provide some interesting insights into the pressures being felt by Fedora’s leadership.

A recent video review of Fedora 10 was seen by the project as being something other than entirely favorable. But the biggest complaint expressed by the project is on a different subject: credit for work which is done by Fedora developers. Quoting Fedora leader Paul Frields:

Another point that had me scratching my head was the same host indicating that Fedora had a lot of features that were in Ubuntu 8.10. This is certainly true, but the differentiator is that many of these features were *built* by Fedora contributors, inside and outside Red Hat. It’s important for us to keep emphasizing this fact.

Subsequent discussion indicates that a number of Fedora developers feel that other distributions – Ubuntu in particular – are stealing Fedora’s thunder by shipping Fedora-developed improvements first. This is not the first time this kind of concern has been raised; it has been asserted that Novell’s behind-closed-doors XGL work was done that way to keep Ubuntu from shipping it first. Fedora does not appear to be considering pulling its development from public view – that would run counter to the project’s open nature – but some other responses are being discussed.

More than anything else, the Fedora project would like to ensure that the world knows about the work its developers are doing. Initiatives like the feature list for each release help to get information out ahead of the actual software release. There is also talk of more aggressive blogging, outreach to news sites, etc. The project has even posted a proposed marketing schedule which would help to ensure that all the right marketing activities are happening at the right points in the release cycle.

Former Fedora leader Max Spevack had a different suggestion to offer:

If “features” and “first” are hurting because of where we are in the calendar compared to the Ubuntu release, allowing them the chance to release their new distro first and to receive a lot of credit for new features when reviewers and press don’t understand where the upstream work is being done (in Fedora, for example), then Fedora Marketing should ask the Fedora Board to think about altering our “May Day” and “Halloween” release targets by a little bit, so that Fedora’s cycle finishes before Ubuntu’s.

This proposal brings to mind a vision of distributors racing to be the first to release, leading to ever-shorter cycles and a corresponding decrease in release quality. It is hard to imagine that the first mover has such an overwhelming marketing advantage; there must be a better way.

It does not look like Fedora will attempt a “first post” counterattack anytime soon. In fact, if the recently-posted Fedora 11 release schedule proposal is adopted, the exact opposite will happen. In the past, Fedora has responded to a much-delayed release by shortening the following release cycle in an attempt to get back on schedule. For Fedora 11, it would appear that this will not happen; there will be no attempt to go for a “May Day” release.

The reasoning against shortening the Fedora 11 cycle comes down to this:

Fedora 11 will be extremely important to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (otherwise known as RHEL). RHEL 6 planning has looked to use Fedora 10 and Fedora 11 as releases to work out new technologies and features that are desired in RHEL 6. This includes a lot of upstream work that is being done, and targeted to land in these two releases.

So a shortened Fedora 11 cycle would make it harder to get all of the changes planned for RHEL6 in. That’s problematic for Red Hat, and, since Red Hat pays for much of Fedora’s existence, Red Hat’s problems become Fedora’s problems. Beyond that, though, it seems that a number of core Red Hat engineers will be working on Fedora during the next cycle to help get RHEL6-targeted features into shape. If the next cycle is shorter, Fedora will get less attention from those developers. Fedora would like to avoid that situation and take advantage of the RHEL team’s attention while it can.

So the proposal is to retain the six-month cycle for Fedora 11 and release around the beginning of June. The Fedora 12 cycle, though, would be shortened to get the project back to the original schedule. The hope is that the advance notice will make it easier to plan for a short release cycle; Jesse Keating also suggests that the project “could even focus more on polish issues in F12 than large sweeping features.” The more cynically-minded among us might conclude that Fedora 11 will be stuffed full of bleeding-edge new stuff that the RHEL team wants to evaluate, and Fedora 12 will be the release where all of that work is actually stabilized. But your editor would never want to be cynical.

The initial response to the proposed schedule is almost entirely positive, so it seems likely that things will go that way. Some Fedora developers may feel that releasing behind Ubuntu gives the project a public relations disadvantage, but other concerns are seen as being more important. Since those “other concerns” can be seen as “take the time to focus a lot of work on pulling together new features for an upcoming stable release,” this set of priorities seems hard to argue with.