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> In my experience, the longer a patch (or worse, patch series) sits
> around, the staler it gets. Others are merging changes, so the
> long-lived patch series has to be constantly rebased.

This is definitely true.

> The 20% developer would be spending a greater proportion of her time
> figuring out how to solve the rebase conflicts instead of just
> focusing on her code.

Agreed. The first reaction I had to this proposal was pretty much what
you state here: that now the 20% person has a 365-day window in which
they have to keep their head in the game, instead of a 180-day one.

Assuming doubling the length of the cycle has no impact on the
_importance_ of the thing the 20% person is working on, relative to
project priorities, then the longer cycle just means they have to
continuously rebase for a longer period of time.

--Dan