Dear all, thanks for all your input and ideas!
I wanted to wait for most of the feedback to flow in, until I reply.
First most, I guess, we all conclude that this is a problem, which could accompany us for all next releases, if we don’t work on it. Please do speak up, if you disagree.
Just in case my initial post was easy to misunderstand: We are in no real bad situation because of this “release date versus holiday season” conflict. I mainly made this post, because I observed this shortening of EOL for the first time. I use NixOS since 18.09 and started getting involved more actively around 2022. Also, English is my second language, which do will add some room for misinterpretation, scusi.
I’d like to pick up 2 main arguments, which I noticed:
1. Throwing resources on problems
Hiring more people to work on our infra, is one aspect we are considering, as we just did with a student. We are a non-profit (legal status comparable to a 501(c)(3) in the States, just in German law: gemeinnütziger eingetragener Verein), so just adding resources ain’t too easy due to budget constrains.
Also, buying LTS support like Ctrl-OS is not something we consider, as we do not have to follow such strict compliance rules, as the customers it is intended for. Also, not falling into LTS is cool.
In the end, adding ressources does not solve this problem for us, as it won’t for anybody else (IMHO).
2. No perfect date for everyone
Yes… also thanks for the reply on non-professionals upgrading during the holidays, totally get that. For me, I upgraded the whole of December, usual working hours and the holidays included. Not asking for pity, just something I have to work on before 26.11. Hence this post.
I am no fan of shifting the months of the releases (option 2 in my initial post), which – for me at least – is out of question by now, e.g. @qyliss made some good points.
About moving forward, I talked to @leona who managed the 25.11 release (thank you!), and just read the 25.05 retro (thanks for the hint @numinit). I guess we could and should definitely go for option 3 (more documentation on testing before release), and consider option 1 (extend EOL).
For extending EOL we’d need more capacity on hydra, where I’ll ping some people who work on that privately. For option 3 I’d need to read more up on that and get in contact with some aswell.
If you feel like giving more input, happy to read your replies.
Thanks again!