Dapper Drake Delayed? Decisive Debate Devolves.

Looks like I might not get a birthday present from Canonical next month, as Mark Shuttleworth, company owner and Ubuntu Benevolent Dictator for Life, said that he want s the distro to be delayed for six weeks for "additional validation, certification, localisation, and polish".

My opinion? Great news. The current version of the distro does everything I need and more, so it's not something that burns in my bones. I don't mind holding on for an early June release. I mentioned before how profound were the improvements in the current version (5.10 a.k.a. "Breezy Badger) over the 5.04 version (Hoary Hedgehog), and this alone makes me very, very excited towards the next release (6.04, Dapper Drake, although I guess it'll be called 6.06 now...).

Actually, the biggest issue of concern is that Ubuntu and Canonical have tried to differentiate themselves from other non-commercial GNU/Linux distribution by offering a quasi-commercial development cycle, i.e. new release every 6 months. This delay might be the first crack in the wall of excellence Ubuntu has been building around itself. Only, to be honest, I doubt it would do any actual damage.

I've previously posted my concerns that it seems the developers are concerning more on bells, whistles and gongs rather than refining the software, but it seems their hearts and minds are in the right place. For me, it's a Good Thing. I'll wait the extra weeks for something that would make my (already excellent) Ubuntu experience better.