Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 3:54 PM, Joerg Schilling Joerg.Schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote:
Would you like to run a Linux kernel from 2004 today?
Has the CD format changed since 2004?
This is why you are happy with buggy software from 2004 shipped by redhat when there is software with no known bugs?
This isn't aimed at you personally, but the reason people like RHEL/CentOS is that the 'no known bugs' status of a developer's software release often turns pretty quickly into 'bugs with no known fix' when they hit a wider distribution. And developers like to change things in ways that break existing interfaces in what they think are improvements.
The Linux kernel and Linux distros are known for breaking things by e.g. changing interfaces.
Cdrtools are known for stability and backwardscompatibility while at the same time enhancing functionality.
Redhat had more than 100 bugs filed against the "cdrtools" version they ship. All these bugs could be avoided by upgrading to a recent original version. Redhat closed these unfixed bugs instead of doing it's homework that would result in updated versions.
So it seems that redhat doesn't care about bug reports.
You are in a better position to judge that than me, but the whole point of RHEL is to never break exiting, previously working interfaces (and thus their user's programs...) within the life cycle of the distro. So if they would lose backwards compatibility anywhere by updating - and perhaps even if it isn't clear that they wouldn't, they they are correctly following the policy that the people on this list typically want. Othewise we'd be off reinstalling todays new and buggy version of some other disto instead of reading email while our servers keep working. But, maybe it's not so great for desktop type activity that wasn't feature-complete in 2004. And if you are talking about bug reports that were made long enough before the 6.0 release to have gotten the update in, then I'd say you are right regardless of compatibility.
I am talking about obvious bugs that apply to the redhat version but not to the original code. I am talking about closing unfixed bugs instead of upgrading to newer versions. I am talking abut redhat that is not doing it's homeworks.
People complain about problems and redhat is ignoring them even though the bug reports contain comments that make it obvious that the right way to deal with the bug is to upgrade to a more recent version. Nothing happens and after a few years the bugs are closed even thoug the bug still exists on redhat.
Jörg