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Probably just one example: Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10274245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10274

Probably just one example: Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10274245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10274245

jka 6y ago
Impressive - tagged for mozilla 0.91 in the bugtracker twenty (!) years ago. I didn't express the criteria I had in mind very clearly; I'd been wondering about longest elapsed time without any other bugreports occurring (ruling out Mozilla, and probably many other large codebases). Essentially trying to determine ways to find the best-known examples of stable and reliable widely-used software.
- bombcar 6y ago
  TeX and METAFont just had bug fix releases after 7 years or something.
  - jka 6y ago
    Thanks - good examples. That also led me to https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/boss.html https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/boss.html which is a unique curiosity. Do you know if that was a 7-year duration from previous release to bug discovery, or a 7-year duration between releases?
    - bombcar 6y ago
      It’s the latter (and not sure if it is 7 years) - but Knuth only looks at big reports periodically (and he has people who scrub them for him) and has declared that upon his death any remaining bugs are features and the code will cease changing. The bugs are super obscure edge cases now - I suppose if someone found an extremely severe bug Knuth would release earlier than the next planned interval. http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb42-1/tb130knuth-tuneup21.pdf http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb42-1/tb130knuth-tuneup21.pdf has further details. It’s from a different time where programs could be considered to have a “final form” and be completed. True software engineering.
- pdw 6y ago
  The BSDs had a bug in the seekdir() function that was only discovered after 25 years: https://msys.ch/fixing_seekdir https://msys.ch/fixing_seekdir
  - jka 6y ago
    Incredible, and what a great write-up. I think that's the front-runner at the moment :) Edit: addendum: To correct my own comment: I guess technically this doesn't pass the "without any other bugreports" criteria, so it's in the same category as the Mozilla issue report, and perhaps the sort algorithm is the front-runner. Perhaps it'd be possible to add some kind of focusing criteria around the 'size' of the module/component - since any large enough codebase is - at least using today's development methodologies - likely to include bugs.
jfk13 6y ago
14? Hah.... a mere youngster. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92176 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92176 was close to 20 years old when it recently got fixed. (Pretty sure I've seen even older issues eventually get fixed, but don't recall details offhand.)

Probably just one example: Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10274245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10274245

jka 6y ago

Impressive - tagged for mozilla 0.91 in the bugtracker twenty (!) years ago. I didn't express the criteria I had in mind very clearly; I'd been wondering about longest elapsed time without any other bugreports occurring (ruling out Mozilla, and probably many other large codebases). Essentially trying to determine ways to find the best-known examples of stable and reliable widely-used software.

bombcar 6y ago
TeX and METAFont just had bug fix releases after 7 years or something.
- jka 6y ago
  Thanks - good examples. That also led me to https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/boss.html https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/boss.html which is a unique curiosity. Do you know if that was a 7-year duration from previous release to bug discovery, or a 7-year duration between releases?
  - bombcar 6y ago
    It’s the latter (and not sure if it is 7 years) - but Knuth only looks at big reports periodically (and he has people who scrub them for him) and has declared that upon his death any remaining bugs are features and the code will cease changing. The bugs are super obscure edge cases now - I suppose if someone found an extremely severe bug Knuth would release earlier than the next planned interval. http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb42-1/tb130knuth-tuneup21.pdf http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb42-1/tb130knuth-tuneup21.pdf has further details. It’s from a different time where programs could be considered to have a “final form” and be completed. True software engineering.
pdw 6y ago
The BSDs had a bug in the seekdir() function that was only discovered after 25 years: https://msys.ch/fixing_seekdir https://msys.ch/fixing_seekdir
- jka 6y ago
  Incredible, and what a great write-up. I think that's the front-runner at the moment :) Edit: addendum: To correct my own comment: I guess technically this doesn't pass the "without any other bugreports" criteria, so it's in the same category as the Mozilla issue report, and perhaps the sort algorithm is the front-runner. Perhaps it'd be possible to add some kind of focusing criteria around the 'size' of the module/component - since any large enough codebase is - at least using today's development methodologies - likely to include bugs.

jfk13 6y ago

14? Hah.... a mere youngster. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92176 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92176 was close to 20 years old when it recently got fixed. (Pretty sure I've seen even older issues eventually get fixed, but don't recall details offhand.)