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