Subject: Re: Request for a version/ revision/ release number for the whole Cygwin release/ distribution
From: Brian Dessent <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 2004 12:03:02 -0700

David Christensen wrote:

> This wish was inspired by my positive experiences with Debian "stable"
> -- e.g. feature frozen, unit and integration tested, with updates
> limited to bug and security fixes.
> 
> Please note that Debian is a volunteer effort:
> 
>         http://www.debian.org/devel/join/
> 
> If they can do it, I bet we can too.

Quick reality check: Debian has over 1300 registered developers --
vetted, trusted package maintainers with CVS commit access.  They
probably have tens of thousands of clueful users that report bugs and
follow up as necessary, and many hundreds of thousands of installations
from which to take reports and collect stats about bugs.  They have an
elaborate infrastructure for their 12 supported platforms, and god knows
how many hundreds of mailing lists and sub-communities.   And of course
the user groups, donated corporate support, etc.

Cygwin barely has 1300 _total mailing list subscribers_.  At last count
there were less than 1k people subscribed to the main Cygwin list, and
another 400 or so on digest mode.  If I had to guestimate the number of
"developers" who actively develop and patch Cygwin it would be between 5
and 10, with probably another additional 20 or 30 total package
maintainers.  The numbers just aren't comparable.  It would be one thing
if you were offering to spear-head this and forge ahead to new ground,
but "I'd like it but can't personally donate leadership" comes off
sounding kind of weak.

Brian

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