On Monday 13 March 2006 13:59, Les Mikesell wrote:
Maybe someday a distribution will figure out that users really want a stable OS along with current apps instead of bundling new device drivers along with version-level desktop app updates. Until then, or at least until packaging lets you install new/expermental versions alongside your well-tested working application, people will continue to do strange and desperate things...
Let me make a minor edit to this well-thought-out paragraph, Les. The change is from 'distribution' to 'upstream open-source developers who have a NIH attitude and who insist on their required version of any given library as being The Only Acceptable Version'. Typically the distribution has very little control on what the upstream requires (this isn't strictly true for Red Hat or Novell, since they employee a good sized percentage of upstream developers.
Thus the need to keep so many versions of, say, GTK or OpenSSL in the distribution. It goes back to the upstream's willingness to work with older versions of libraries. And, in this case, I'm not referring to Red Hat as the upstream; I referring to MySQL AB, the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, the KDE project, the GCC and GLIBC developers, the Linux developers, etc.