In defense of Fedora’s release cycle
Earlier this week, Thorsten Leemhuis published a thoughtful post about what he’d change if he magically became the supreme leader of Fedora. In that post and subsequent commentary on Mastodon and Fedora Discussion, he talked about changing Fedora’s release cycle. Since the Fedora Linux release process is my job, I figured I should explain why I disagree.
If you haven’t read the post, you should. But here’s the short version: Fedora Linux uses a release model rooted in the 1990s and should move to a “modern” model. Thorsten suggests a one-month cadence for those who want the latest versions and a one-year “steady” release. Such a model has worked well for Firefox, he argues, and so it should work for Fedora.
The key reason I think this is wrong is because Firefox is a development project whereas Fedora is an integration project. Integration projects don’t write a lot of code, they take the work of others and turn it into a coherent whole. This is a fundamentally different kind of work and it takes longer by necessity.