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Date:      Wed, 5 Jun 2002 19:24:30 +0100
From:      Brian Somers <brian@Awfulhak.org>
To:        Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>
Cc:        bakul@bitblocks.com, arch@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Avoiding unnecessary breakage (was Re: Removing wait union)
Message-ID:  <20020605192430.1f29c8d2.brian@Awfulhak.org>
In-Reply-To: <p05111729b92324e697ef@[128.113.24.47]>
References:  <200206050051.UAA07971@renown.cnchost.com> <p05111729b92324e697ef@[128.113.24.47]>

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On Tue, 4 Jun 2002 22:51:20 -0400, Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> wrote:
> >Brian Somers writes:
> >  > Many software vendors would say that a published interface
> >  > can only be removed after two major releases of the software.
> >
> >Right idea but I am not too keen on such hard and fast rules.
> >The issue is sticking to rules and self-policing just doesn't
> >work for most people.
> 
> Aside: I would also say that I feel that "two major releases"
> might be a bit too painful for changes in the freebsd project,
> if you're talking about major releases being 3.0 vs 4.0.  We
> have people who don't stay as active developers for the length
> of time it takes FreeBSD to make it thru two major releases...

Well, if developers don't hang around long enough to see their changes
through to completion, that's our (FreeBSD's) problem.  We can't push
the problem onto the users of our platform.

A company that develops software doesn't expect to have to employ
software engineers (to redevelop their software) for an OS upgrade - an
OS upgrade that we're essentially forcing on them because of our
frequent releases and our inability to support all but the latest of
those releases.

> -- 
> Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu
> Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad@freebsd.org
> Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih@rpi.edu

-- 
Brian <brian@Awfulhak.org>                       <brian.somers@sun.com>
      <http://www.Awfulhak.org>;                <brian@[uk.]FreeBSD.org>
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour !       <brian@[uk.]OpenBSD.org>

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