[CentOS] Re: Demonizing generic Linux issues as Fedora Core-only issues -- this thread has ended ...

From: Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>
> If you believe that, you have to believe that Red Hat's programmers
> are always better than the original upstream program author.

How do you assert that?  It has _nothing_ to do with my statement.

You keep thinking there is this absolute "black/white" on why developers,
vendors, etc... do this or that.  There are reasons to upgrade to a newer
version, and there are other reasons to backport.  One is _not_ better
than the other, or developers are not any more or less "smart" if they do.

What I said was it is _harder_ for a distro to take the take to backport
fixes and minimize impact to existing compatibility than to merely just
rely and ship the latest version from a developer.  There are reasons to
upgrade (features, project support, etc...) and there are reason to
backport (minimal impact, regression tested inter-package compatibility,
etc...).

There is no "black/white" on which one is "better."  I just merely stated
_why_ SLA guaranteed distros do the "backport," which is more difficult
to accommodate because the project developers/support typically are
just focused on the next version, and you have to replicate much of
their knowledge/expertise internally (instead of just taking their next
version with the patches/fixes).

> I'll agree that they are good and on the average do a good job, but
> that stops far short of saying that they know better than the
> perl (etc.) teams what version you should be running.

And _where_ did I say that?

All I said was that _backporting_ is done to _minimize_ impact to the
_entire_ set of _all_ packages that have been "regression tested" into
a released, SLA guaranteed distro.  That's what RHEL/SLES are about.

At what point are you going to stop seeing what I saw as a black/white
thing and realize that RHEL/SLES have _different_ foci than what you
may want, and _that's_ why you're not getting what you want in stock
CentOS?  Is it really that hard to understand?

When you understand that there is a pro/con to "staying current" v.
"backports," and why distros like RHEL/SLES are typically "anal" to the
"backport" side -- which seemingly conflicts with what you want, then
we can talk.

Until then, you seem to want to assert that what I'm saying is something
about "better" when that is _not_ what I'm saying.  I'm trying to explain
"why" -- _not_ "better."

End of thread.





--
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org