Allegedly, on or about 27 January 2013, Ranjan Maitra sent:
But the rush to release will still be there, whether it is a 6- or 9- or 12-month cycle? At the point of release, inadequately-tested new features may still be a problem, no?
I think a more reliable approach is to have a rolling release model, with periodic snapshot RPMs in a cycle? The periodic snapshots could be benchmark-based, so no specific time schedule, rather than calendar-based?
I tend to agree.
You could, very easily, be testing a distro in preparation for its general release, with all looking well. But it only takes an updated package, or two, to stuff things up. It might pass the testing, at the time, but last minute packages wouldn't have had the amount of testing, under more varied circumstances, than packages that have been their for longer.
It's not such a huge problem when its something like Firefox, which can be replaced by an post-install update. But when something that's required to do the installation is screwed up, that is a big problem.
Likewise, things that are core to the distro become a big problem, if the plan is not to replace them during that release.