An update on the long term plans for Ubuntu release management. 8.04 LTS represented a very significant step forward in our release management thinking. To the best of my knowledge there has never been an “enterprise platform” release delivered exactly on schedule, to the day, in any proprietary or Linux OS.

Not only did it prove that we could execute an LTS release in the standard 6-month timeframe, but it showed that we could commit to such an LTS the cycle beforehand. Kudos to the technical decision-makers, the release managers, and the whole community who aligned our efforts with that goal.

As a result, we can commit that the next LTS release of Ubuntu will be 10.04 LTS, in April 2010.

This represents one of the most extraordinary, and to me somewhat unexpected, benefits of free software to those who deploy it. Most people would assume that precise release management would depend on having total control of all the moving parts - and hence only be possible in a proprietary setting.

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