[Ksummit-discuss] "Maintainer summit" invitation discussion

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 11:17:18AM +0300, Jani Nikula wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Apr 2017, Linus Torvalds <torvalds at linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> > Yeah, I don't think we can do much about distros that intentionally
> > want to stay behind and backport.
> 
> /me looks at https://www.kernel.org/
> 
> 1 stable, 8 longterm, and 1 eol'd longterm kernels. The oldest longterm
> is based on a five years old release.

That 5 year old kernel is due to Debian's looney release schedule, go
take it up with them :)

> I just think the multitude of longterm kernels are sending a message
> that it's perfectly fine to stay behind. Don't get me wrong, I know why
> they are there, but I still think in the past the focus on encouraging
> to always use the latest stable kernel was stronger.

And how do you suggest that we do that any more than we currently do?
(i.e. I go around and talk to companies all the time about this issue,
did a tour of Asia last month, and will be talking to some US-based
companies next month.)

As you say, you know why they are there, so why is that not a valid
reason in itself?  :)

And you will note (although everyone seems to ignore it), that we are
now only adding 1 new LTS kernel a year, and have been for the past few
years, in order to cut down on the proliferation we had 3-4 years back.

thanks,

greg k-h