I think there is something of a master plan, as much as you can have with a bunch of raving anarchists But there is a lot of openeness to the future also.- will the 5.25 be supported for long time? Or will it be superceded by 5.26 in 4 weeks time (I am running 5.20 since it's release, and would move to 5.25 if it this was the long time support version, and I could look forward to a growing and maintained SFS/PET library).
- is there going to be a Puppy 5.3 series, or Puppy 6 series.
- are there plans to merge Barry's puppies back into mainstream ... or the 5 series into Barries puppies ?
Lucid 5.2.5 is finished. There are no plans to release any more Lucid Puppies. It is also a Ubuntu Long Term Support release so I plan to keep maintaining the LupuNews and the puppy-lucid repo in the Puppy Package Manager for at least a year--not always at the same pace--I have been doing a lot the last couple of weeks in terms of the available packages.
Yes, in 4.3.1 there was only one mainstream Puppy and Barry was the man. Barry needs more freedom than to be tied down to debugging one release after another--he is the idea man!
Right now on puppylinux.com Barry lists two "official releases."
LATEST VERSIONS: Lucid 5.2.5, Wary 5.1.2
Wary for older hardware and Lucid for current hardware. There are other differences--Wary is more a "standard" Puppy for instance.
In addition to these there are the many great Puppy "derivatives." Puppies of all breeds and colors
At some point, afaik, Barry will designate a new official Puppy. He may choose for that to replace Lucid, or he may add one to the list. Barry is still the man for decisions like that. Either way, Lucid will be maintained for the year or so. IMHO, Lucid is a very usable Puppy, well-tested, reasonably stable, with a good amount of software available. With that said, for many people, testing and using the many available Puppies is part of the fun.
Your question gave me this idea.
I just answered a message from a person who was worried about "investing in the wrong Puppy" meaning, in the past 4.3.1 was clearly the one official Puppy--now it is different. Plus, there are worries when updating the something could go wrong and crater one's data.
This is a big project--not simple--but maybe worth discussing: a separate sfs file for data. Currently the modifications one makes to Puppy, by adding pets, etc., and one's data are kept in the same sfs file--and it is the one that is updated with a new Puppy. But if there was separate sfs for data then one could boot any Puppy and work on that same data, and upgrading any Puppy would not touch the sfs file with one's data in it. One can do something similar now by keeping data in /mnt/home--but I am thinking less experienced users might not understand that and it might be better to do it automatically. Barry would have to do this in the scripts--I am not even sure about the details.One thing, the user would have to choose, because Puppy will not know the difference between data and a new pet file for instance.