4 ms·

No. Ideally, the goal is that users will upgrade as soon as a fix is available.

by sarciszewski 12y ago

taeric 12y ago
I would think ideally, programmers wouldn't break things that are working. We know that ideal doesn't pan out.
- sarciszewski 12y ago
  "programmers wouldn't break things that are working" So you want the world's best security experts to manually review every module of every program you use, as well as every piece of every operating system you want it to run on, to make sure there are 100% certainly no exploitable bugs that could require a fix down the line? That's the same argument, but with reality applied. Programmers don't "break things that are working", people find design flaws that could lead to remote exploitation. If you don't patch your stuff, enjoy being 0wned, not my problem. For the rest of the world, bleeding edge is the safest place to be.
  - taeric 12y ago
    Yes, yes I would love that. Though, as I noted, nobody expects that ideal to pan out. Reality applied to many large organizations to the prospect that things may break on an upgrade translates to "don't upgrade." And really, this isn't necessarily bad. So long as what isn't getting upgraded has been compartmentalized and does its job correctly. Consider, we don't even think about asking companies to upgrade processors on a yearly basis. Monitors? Good for years. Actually, pretty much all of the hardware. Why do we think software should be different?
LukeB_UK 12y ago
The author makes it sound like the developers won't care about the bug because the user waited from 4.4 until 5.6 to upgrade. In this case the user is better off not upgrading if the developers aren't doing to do anything about it.
- sarciszewski 12y ago
  No, in this case, the user should have been upgrading this whole time, not putting it off for 3+ years. Downvote me all you want. Tough love is what's needed here. Hiding my comments isn't going to make peoples' negligence any less their fault.
  - obsurveyor 12y ago
    Their network card still would have broken at some point and they'd be in the same bind they are in now: A non-working critical part and at the mercy of the developers to identify and fix the bug.
    - ams6110 12y ago
      Exactly this thing happened to me in an OpenBSD upgrade. My network card no longer worked. That prompted me to actually read the release notes, and I quickly found the reason.
- Yen 12y ago
  The author didn't say the developers wouldn't care, but that the extra effort means the developers wouldn't care enough. Fixing a bug requires figuring out what's broken, and that's a lot easier when you know something broke between 4.7 and 4.8, than in any of the revisions between 4.4 and 5.6. (Especially if there were actually two latent bugs in 4.4, one of which got exposed in 4.8, and one of which got exposed in 5.2)

No. Ideally, the goal is that users will upgrade as soon as a fix is available.

taeric 12y ago

I would think ideally, programmers wouldn't break things that are working. We know that ideal doesn't pan out.

sarciszewski 12y ago
"programmers wouldn't break things that are working" So you want the world's best security experts to manually review every module of every program you use, as well as every piece of every operating system you want it to run on, to make sure there are 100% certainly no exploitable bugs that could require a fix down the line? That's the same argument, but with reality applied. Programmers don't "break things that are working", people find design flaws that could lead to remote exploitation. If you don't patch your stuff, enjoy being 0wned, not my problem. For the rest of the world, bleeding edge is the safest place to be.
- taeric 12y ago
  Yes, yes I would love that. Though, as I noted, nobody expects that ideal to pan out. Reality applied to many large organizations to the prospect that things may break on an upgrade translates to "don't upgrade." And really, this isn't necessarily bad. So long as what isn't getting upgraded has been compartmentalized and does its job correctly. Consider, we don't even think about asking companies to upgrade processors on a yearly basis. Monitors? Good for years. Actually, pretty much all of the hardware. Why do we think software should be different?

LukeB_UK 12y ago

The author makes it sound like the developers won't care about the bug because the user waited from 4.4 until 5.6 to upgrade. In this case the user is better off not upgrading if the developers aren't doing to do anything about it.

sarciszewski 12y ago
No, in this case, the user should have been upgrading this whole time, not putting it off for 3+ years. Downvote me all you want. Tough love is what's needed here. Hiding my comments isn't going to make peoples' negligence any less their fault.
- obsurveyor 12y ago
  Their network card still would have broken at some point and they'd be in the same bind they are in now: A non-working critical part and at the mercy of the developers to identify and fix the bug.
  - ams6110 12y ago
    Exactly this thing happened to me in an OpenBSD upgrade. My network card no longer worked. That prompted me to actually read the release notes, and I quickly found the reason.
Yen 12y ago
The author didn't say the developers wouldn't care, but that the extra effort means the developers wouldn't care enough. Fixing a bug requires figuring out what's broken, and that's a lot easier when you know something broke between 4.7 and 4.8, than in any of the revisions between 4.4 and 5.6. (Especially if there were actually two latent bugs in 4.4, one of which got exposed in 4.8, and one of which got exposed in 5.2)