Shortly following the release of 2.6.16, Adrian Bunk sent out a message announcing the 2.6.16 kernel will be a long-lived (read: maintained) kernel. He started a thread about this on lkml earlier:
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/12/3/55

Link to e-mail:
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0603.2/1274.html

This is a great initiative, since the reasons listed in his FAQ are very recognizable. For example, the switch away from devfs was a big headache for many using debian sarge.