Ubuntu release cycle and Developers

[etherion]

I was just wondering

Ubuntu has just released 11.10, and 12.04 is scheduled to come out in April 2012.
I know that there are a lot of developers but I'm just wondering, are most of the developers now focused on developing 12.04, or is there a group of developers that decide to maintain 11.10 until its support is over, or does the development of 12.04 help to iron out the bugs/upgrades in 11.10?

 

[ponder]

They have people handling security updates & backports.

 

[etherion]

They have people handling security updates & backports.

so then are those people also involved in the development of the next release?

 

[Avenue]

There must be people working on the current releases because they add updates all the time. What I suspect happens though is that the program is modular. So when they fix something they release it for the current versions and integrate those same fixes into the new versions.

 

[etherion]

There must be people working on the current releases because they add updates all the time. What I suspect happens though is that the program is modular. So when they fix something they release it for the current versions and integrate those same fixes into the new versions.

Ahhh, that makes sense.
Whew that's a lot of work since they must support 10.04 10.10 11.04 and 11.10

 

[ponder]

Whew that's a lot of work since they must support 10.04 10.10 11.04 and 11.10

Not really as a lot of it is a automated process.

 

[etherion]

I've also wondered why ubuntu uses a time-based release.
I read on it https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TimeBasedReleases as to why they do it.
It it seems like it's one of those quality vs quantity, Having the latest software is nice, but i think most users would opt for a stable system, for instance i like the way Debian does it. They have Stable (older packages), testing(which ubuntu is based on) and unstable.

 

[Smiley_lauf]

I think Ubuntu LTS are meant to serve as more stable releases, all in between releases are test builds leading up to then LTS release. if mission critical updates do come up later, then they get backportted to the LTS officially, or unoficially through user ppa.