Linux-2.3.18... and a freeze

    From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
 Subject: Linux-2.3.18... and a freeze
    Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 14:00:34 -0700 (PDT)
      To: Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu>

Ok,
Linux-2.3.18 is out there now, and it also marks the beginning of the long-promised feature freeze for 2.4.x. To make that freeze more effective, I'm taking two weeks off, just so that you simply CANNOT tempt me with features.

Thanks to David Hinds and others for the last weeks of merging of PCMCIA etc, I'm now officially happy.

Note that feature freeze is different from code freeze. We'll still do updates of drivers etc without being too anal about it, and even completely new drivers (or possibly filesystems) etc may possibly be accepted as long as they don't impact _anything_ else and don't imply a completely new approach to something. Drivers in particular tend to be updated even in the stable kernel, after all.

But expect me to be less than enthusiastic about even new drivers. New ideas for core functionality are right out.

The feature freeze should be turning into a code freeze in another two months or so, and a release by the end of the year. And as everybody knows, our targets never slip.

And as I said, don't even bother emailing me for the next two weeks, because you won't be reaching me anyway, and the mail accumulated over the two weeks will be unceremoniously dumped into a toxic waste container, to be buried in concrete somewhere at sea. Never to be opened again, in short.

I'll have fun. You do too,

   Linus