[Openembedded-architecture] Yocto Project stable release changes

[Adrian Bunk]

On Sun, Feb 02, 2020 at 11:48:49PM +0000, Richard Purdie wrote:
> On Mon, 2020-02-03 at 01:13 +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
>...
> > 2. Branch change when changing to community maintainance would be bad
> > 
> > This would silently break any automated setup that follows a stable
> > branch for getting security updates.
> 
> This I disagree with, quite strongly.
> 
> When something moves to community support, it means the testing and
> quality could change.

Regarding testing, the only documented difference between LTS branches
and community branches is "Automated testing is on a best effort basis".

Regarding other quality aspects, I do not see why the community branch
patch review and merging process has to be different from the normal
stable process.

> I believe at such a point people need to actively
> decide whether its for them or not.

I believe this is the same "Do I need security fixes?" question people 
already had to answer when deciding whether to use a point release or
following the stable branch.

>...
> > 4. It is hard to contribute to a stable series (both LTS and non-LTS)
> > 
> > Apart from submitting patches, it is hard to find ways to contribute
> > to stable series when you are not a big company that can afford a
> > huge contribution.
> > 
> > How could an individual or small company contribute specifically
> > to something like "5 years security support for Yocto 3.1"?
> > The 6 digit resource commitment of paying 50% of the time of a
> > qualified person is obvious. It is less clear how Yocto would be able
> > to accept and use a € 10k contribution.
> 
> Yocto exists to allow people to pool together and do things together
> when they might not otherwise have been able to. A single €10k
> contribution can do so much, if you have 10 of them, you can suddenly
> do an awful lot more or achieve something you otherwise couldn't!
> 
> YP does things which need help from people, it also does things which
> need money. We take very gratefully take whatever contributions we can
> in whatever form they come in.

It is not obvious which legal entity would do the actual pooling of the 
money for the intended purpose.

Would the Linux Foundation pay a YP LTS maintainer and send invoices 
for contributions to the salary?
What kind of recognition can YP offer to contributors that are not 
Linux Foundation members?

>...
> If you have ideas for how we could better accept
> contributions, or recognise them I'd be interested to understand them.
>...

Debian LTS has a setup where the minimal annual contribution is € 255,
and € 1020 per year gets your company logo on the sponsorship page.[1]
The rest is just a standard "get invoice and make SEPA payment".

At these financial amounts and level of recognition it is easier to
convince a customer or employer that a contribution is beneficial.

I would be surprised if anything like this would be easy to setup
for YP.

> Cheers,
> 
> Richard

cu
Adrian

[1] https://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts.html