On Thu, Dec 28, 2017 at 01:45:52PM +0000, Mike Tubby wrote:

>
> How long are Devuan releases, like Jessie, going to be supported? Debian
> Jessie appears to end at the end of 2018, according to this:


Devuan jessie is an LTS release. it will be supported at least until
Debian Jessie LTS, i.e., end of 2020. Please refer to the original
announcement:

https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/stable-jessie-announce-052517

>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_version_history#Debian_8_(Jessie)
>
> will Devuan follow on the same timescale?
>

Devuan has no relation with Debian's timeline.

> I would like to formally adopt Devuan for use in our products and platforms
> but we need to provide a five year product support life cycle to our
> customers - so starting from Jessie now doesn't appear to be the right place
> if support ends late 2018/early 2019?
>

See above.

> I note that Devuan release 'Ascii' is marked as 'in development' and this is
> based on Debian 9 'Stretch' which probably will have support over the
> timescales that we need, but there's proposed release date for 'Ascii', i.e.
> no date for when we can expect a version of 'Ascii - stable'?
>

Devuan ASCII will be released when it's ready. The stupid practice of
vomiting a release every six months, and calling "stable" stuff that
it not even in beta stage, results exclusively in letting the final
users do the debugging. If this is what you are looking for, then
Devuan might not be your cookie. Devuan's first aim is stability,
dependability, and freedom.

>
> I think you've done a great job with the work to date but users, customers,
> industry and beyond could do with a clearer picture in respect of release
> dates - as I am sure that you are aware one of the advantages with Ubuntu's
> approach is knowing that there is an intermediate release every 6 months and
> a major/LTS release every two years in April.
>
> If you could provide some more clarity in terms of release dates and
> development roadmap (even if it is best-guestimates) this would increase
> confidence and speed up adaption.
>
>

Devuan ASCII will release when it's ready. And by "ready" we mean
without known release-critical issues. We just had a sprint to solve
several bug-critical issues two weeks ago.

It's not short release times that should inspire confidence, rather
the fact that the Devuan development team has decided to remain
consistently cautious about the quality of what is released.

My2Cents

KatolaZ

-- 
[ ~.,_  Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ - Devuan -- Freaknet Medialab  ]  
[     "+.  katolaz [at] freaknet.org --- katolaz [at] yahoo.it  ]
[       @)   http://kalos.mine.nu ---  Devuan GNU + Linux User  ]
[     @@)  http://maths.qmul.ac.uk/~vnicosia --  GPG: 0B5F062F  ] 
[ (@@@)  Twitter: @KatolaZ - skype: katolaz -- github: KatolaZ  ]