Debian adopts time-based releases

Rogério Brito writes: "The Debian Project is well known for having long development cycles, which has, split the opinions of users with those that prefer a stable, reliable release, and those that want newer features (including support for hardware that was sold after the stable version of the distribution). While the development cycles of Debian were mostly driven by the "it's ready when it is ready" philosophy, the project has decided to adopt time-based relases, with the duration of 2 years, freezing the distribution at December of each odd-numbered year and releasing the distribution in the beginning of the next year.

http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090729"