Re: Are we doing a X11R6.8.x maintaince release ?

Jim Gettys wrote:
> Nothing is planned, at least at the moment.  If a suitably motivated
> individual wanted to do one, I expect we'd be happy to see it happened
> (most of our current effort is oriented toward a more significant
> release early next year).
> 
> Security updates will, of course, be generated as needed.
> 			- Jim

I've talked with various others, and there is a strong sentiment to see
the XORG-6_8-branch updated with bug fixes, so that over time additional
point releases can be made.  Of course for this to work well, the
additional work to maintain this branch into the future, and to perform
the release engineering would require additional volunteerism, and it
would seem reasonable to expect those who want the branch to be
maintained to do this extra work.

It would in some ways be like the linux-kernel, where Linus and various 
other developers spend their time hacking on the "head" of development,
while secondary and tertiary kernel maintainers maintain older branches
of the kernel (2.4.x, 2.2.x) for some time afterward.

For the stable branches however, I think no new "features" should go in,
only security fixes, major bugfixes, and simple obvious fixes.  That
doesn't go very far to define each of those 3 categories, however it
is loose enough to initiate some discussion about it however.

I think as long as those interested in seeing this happen come together
and discuss thoughts, we can probably all come up with a common set
of guidelines of how to proceed with future point releases in the
stable branches.

Some X.Org and/or external X developers may not want to be involved at
all in any bugfixing for point releases.  If this turns out to be the
case, I think that is also fine, as the people who want the releases
should be the ones responsible for doing them.  Since this is all mostly
volunteer developer work, it wouldn't be fair to expect volunteers
to contribute and maintain old code they're no longer interested in.

I mention the last part since it's the only reason I can think of for
which someone might object to the idea of point releases - if it were
to make them more work.  If they're not obligated to do so however, I
can't see it as being a problem if others are willing to do such work.

Having said all of the above, I believe there is sufficient number
of interested developers and distributions to maintain at least the
stable branches that are actively shipped and supported in various
OS distributions out there, so it's basically just a matter of everyone
getting together to discuss the details.