Hello there,
I have a very naive question: why should ROS release cycle be tied to
Ubuntu release cycle?

I think that ROS should adopt its own pace depending on the resources
at hand. A one year
release cycle for instance may be enough.

Then, I think that OSRF should just stop building Debian packages for
all distros except the next
one (aka Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy as of today).

It will greatly reduce the pressure on the release team, on the
buildfarm and the only thing lost
is that there will be only *one* version of ROS per Ubuntu distribution.

It does not seem such an important loss to me. The choice of your
Ubuntu version will be tied
to the choice of your ROS version but this is the case for *all* the
other packages you have at hand...

It may have been the case at the beginning when ROS was a complete
sandbox in /opt but now that Boost and
other 3rd party packages are pulled from system dependencies there is
little gain of keeping this system IMHO.

Just to be clear: it does not mean that /less/ distributions will be
supported. It means that /less/ distributions
will be *updated*.
This scheme ensures that there will be *one* ROS release available for
*every* Ubuntu distribution from the
day they are released until their EOL.
This includes very long term support such as Ubuntu LTS server (5
years) which is, IMHO, very needed for
ROS versions which are embedded into robots.

Has this alternative strategy ever been discussed on your side?
-- 
Thomas Moulard