From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,8ae9a80448fc719e X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!w31g2000yqb.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Ludovic Brenta Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Slightly OT: Debian Community Poll Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 08:30:59 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <2b6f3e16-7e5e-46f8-ab35-54a5a6e1a8b0@w31g2000yqb.googlegroups.com> References: <462e855f-e444-455d-9df3-7cab6e88d23d@y11g2000yqm.googlegroups.com> <10mk6myeyhcsu.1rlqoeq87nkl1.dlg@40tude.net> <87pqztnxz9.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org> <4c16ba75$0$6980$9b4e6d93@newsspool4.arcor-online.net> <7f02c9a0-6bf8-4c7f-ade2-c94969d0a5de@x21g2000yqa.googlegroups.com> <1qhssaueuj5im$.d57jtzi7ot23.dlg@40tude.net> <1gq8nkao7tonp.133degase7yqq$.dlg@40tude.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 153.98.68.197 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: posting.google.com 1276615859 21427 127.0.0.1 (15 Jun 2010 15:30:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:30:59 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: w31g2000yqb.googlegroups.com; posting-host=153.98.68.197; posting-account=pcLQNgkAAAD9TrXkhkIgiY6-MDtJjIlC User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3,gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:12731 Date: 2010-06-15T08:30:59-07:00 List-Id: Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote: >> The reason for the longer life cycle of Debian is to match the >> expectations of conservative server administrators. They buy a new >> server and install Debian N on it and do not want any changes in the >> software except, reluctantly, for security bugs. 3 or 4 years later >> they buy a new server, install Debian N+1 on it, migrate their data >> and scrap the old server. > > That answers my question! Outdated packages is Debian policy. Not policy; just a consequence. Also, that depends on the definition of "outdated". To a conservative server administrator, a 3-year-old package can be perfectly up-to-date if it serves its purpose and has no security bug; this is their choice, not yours. Please do not impose your definition of "outdated" on everyone else and do not disparage the hard work that Debian Developers put in quality control. You, an Ada software engineer, should know better than "the latest is always the greatest". You deleted the other half of what I said, so I'll paste it here for reference: >> Since you are neither an academic nor a conservative server >> administrator, as an individual user administering only your own >> machine, you have no reason to lock yourself into a release cycle at >> all; you can upgrade as seldom or as often as you want to. As a >> developer of a future Debian package, you however must build on >> unstable; hence my suggestion to use whatever you want as a user and >> an unstable chroot for your Debian packaging. This second half was for you, Dmitry, and I am a bit sad that you chose to ignore it. Please re-read it aloud, slowly. -- Ludovic Brenta.