From owner-freebsd-arch Wed Jun 5 11:25: 1 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from Awfulhak.org (gw.Awfulhak.org [217.204.245.18]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B6D6B37B401 for ; Wed, 5 Jun 2002 11:24:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hak.lan.Awfulhak.org (root@hak.lan.Awfulhak.org [IPv6:fec0::1:12]) by Awfulhak.org (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g55IOXKZ009791; Wed, 5 Jun 2002 19:24:33 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from brian@Awfulhak.org) Received: from hak.lan.Awfulhak.org (brian@localhost [IPv6:::1]) by hak.lan.Awfulhak.org (8.12.3/8.12.3) with SMTP id g55IOUh0025159; Wed, 5 Jun 2002 19:24:30 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from brian@Awfulhak.org) Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 19:24:30 +0100 From: Brian Somers To: Garance A Drosihn 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: References: <200206050051.UAA07971@renown.cnchost.com> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.7.5claws (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd5.0) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, 4 Jun 2002 22:51:20 -0400, Garance A Drosihn 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 Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour ! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message