[tor-scaling] Summary of 5/31 meeting; next steps

Tue Jun 4 11:38:40 UTC 2019

On 04 Jun (08:30:32), teor wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> > On 4 Jun 2019, at 08:11, Mike Perry <mikeperry at torproject.org> wrote:
> > 
> > But this is a good point for long term: LTS is really going to make it
> > impossible to substantially improve the Tor network with any relay-side
> > new development improvements prior to Feb 1, 2022 (when the 0.3.5 LTS
> > expires).
> > 
> > Most funders are unlikely to be impressed with our inability to provide
> > big-win results sooner than 3 years from now, especially wrt our
> > worst-case performance/variance problem. That's probably longer than it
> > would take just to build a new Tor-like network, instead... We need to
> > find a better way to support Debian/stable relay operators, other than
> > simply letting them hold back the network and increase development time
> > and maintenance costs by running ancient software.
> 
> Most packagers upgrade to the stable Tor version within a month or two of
> a release:
> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/packages
> 
> For Debian, we also run our own deb.torproject.org with the latest stable.
> 
> I'm not sure if there is much more we can do on the packaging side of things.
> We could look at how Rust and Firefox do it: some kind of auto-update
> mechanism.

One way to do this is to convince Debian that when tor is EOL, it is a
security issue and thus they need to move the stable package to whatever next
supported version we offer (or latest...).

This is how we convinced Ubuntu to remove 0.2.7 from their Xenial repository
iirc.

It is a long shot but it is a possible avenue... I'm also worried personally
about the "years long locking" we are in with LTS. I'm more and more convinced
the network should be more agile for new and improved features but also
security and sanity of tor team backport.

I've attached the latest list of versions we have in the network, you'll see
what I meant by quite spread out.

Cheers!
David

-- 
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   1: 0.2.4.19
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   4: 0.2.4.22
  30: 0.2.4.23
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  33: 0.2.4.27
  35: 0.2.4.29
   1: 0.2.5.8-rc
   4: 0.2.5.10
  19: 0.2.5.12
   4: 0.2.5.14
  91: 0.2.5.16
   8: 0.2.6.0-alpha-dev
   2: 0.2.6.9
  14: 0.2.6.10
   1: 0.2.7.1-alpha
   1: 0.2.7.5
  63: 0.2.7.6
   1: 0.2.7.6-dev
   1: 0.2.8.2-alpha
   3: 0.2.8.7
   7: 0.2.8.8
   3: 0.2.8.9
   1: 0.2.8.11
   2: 0.2.8.12
   1: 0.2.9.8
   5: 0.2.9.9
  23: 0.2.9.10
  16: 0.2.9.11
  11: 0.2.9.13
 117: 0.2.9.14
  51: 0.2.9.15
 707: 0.2.9.16
  91: 0.2.9.17
   2: 0.3.0.1-alpha
   8: 0.3.0.7
   1: 0.3.0.8
  17: 0.3.0.9
  12: 0.3.0.10
   1: 0.3.0.11
  18: 0.3.0.13
   1: 0.3.1.3-alpha
  15: 0.3.1.7
   4: 0.3.1.8
  26: 0.3.1.9
   8: 0.3.1.10
   5: 0.3.2.3-alpha
   1: 0.3.2.8-rc
  23: 0.3.2.9
   3: 0.3.2.9-dev
 164: 0.3.2.10
   4: 0.3.2.11
  40: 0.3.2.12
   3: 0.3.3.2-alpha
   3: 0.3.3.3-alpha
   2: 0.3.3.3-alpha-dev
   3: 0.3.3.5-rc
  21: 0.3.3.6
  47: 0.3.3.7
   4: 0.3.3.8
  92: 0.3.3.9
   2: 0.3.3.10
   1: 0.3.3.11
   3: 0.3.3.12
   2: 0.3.4.0-alpha-dev
   1: 0.3.4.1-alpha
   1: 0.3.4.2-alpha
   1: 0.3.4.5-rc
   2: 0.3.4.6-rc
   1: 0.3.4.7-rc
  68: 0.3.4.8
 260: 0.3.4.9
 332: 0.3.4.10
  99: 0.3.4.11
   4: 0.3.5.3-alpha
   5: 0.3.5.6-rc
 522: 0.3.5.7
2733: 0.3.5.8
   1: 0.4.0.0-alpha-dev
   7: 0.4.0.1-alpha
   4: 0.4.0.1-alpha-dev
   6: 0.4.0.2-alpha
  14: 0.4.0.3-alpha
  25: 0.4.0.4-rc
 547: 0.4.0.5
  17: 0.4.1.0-alpha-dev
  42: 0.4.1.1-alpha
   6: 0.4.1.1-alpha-dev
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