This one sounds reasonable to me. Everyone loves bleeding edge and the latest updates until things suddenly stop working.

We, as individuals, have the freedom to choose whether we want nightly updates or more stable ones, but there’s a degree of responsibility that comes from distributing packages to users who, at least, expect usability. This is the case even for those of distros which pride themselves in being bleeding edge.

I like the approach that Arch takes with having the official package and, oftentimes, a “-git” package in the AUR. The expectations should be pretty clear to all users with that.

Can anyone shed any light on what the impetus to this letter was? It very much reads like it must be in response to something specific having been widely distributed prematurely, but doesn’t say what it is/was.

The URL doesn’t work for me.

update: via this post (as well as the comments on the linked pine64 blog post) TIL that this open letter was written in response to Manjaro (an arch-based distro which is now shipped preinstalled on the pinephone) which has shipped some alpha quality software which developers did not consider ready to ship to users yet.