Sometimes, packages can arrive from upstream with desireable features and the occasional nasty bug. Back in ~Woody or so, I switched to testing in order to gain

Sometimes, packages can arrive from upstream with desireable features and the occasional nasty bug. Back in ~Woody or so, I switched to testing in order to gain necessary functionality in a number of packages. If testing hadn't had the features I needed, I would have gone to another distro (perhaps Gentoo, at the time). If some RC-bugs are fixed by the original developers upstream given enough time, then maintaining a continuously "releasable" distro will be more work than the periodic-freeze paradigm, as package maintainers will be forced to clean up upstream's code as it arrives. I don't know if Debian has enough people-power to make that happen. The alternative is simply rejecting upstream's changes until the RC-bugs are fixed. Once upstream packages become interdependent, I imagine things get thorny fast. If it's possible to spread the work out over time, without generating significant extra quantities of work, and simultaneously yield more-timely releases, then it'd be better to do that! :).