On Mon, 2005-06-27 at 09:44 -0400, Dimi Paun wrote:
And did I mention the time, effort, and _frustration_ of users to
get the system running again? What if they didn't install via RPM?
Screw them, they deserve what they get, no? (in which case they
have a snowball's chance in hell of fixing the breakage without
going through hell and back).
I'd choose to place the onus on the developers. If they want their users
to have a good experience, let them do the leg work. Right now, I'd
argue that Windows is the gold standard of backwards compatibility.
Partly because Microsoft tries hard to keep things compatible, but
mostly because behind the scenes there are individual application
developers bleeding, sweating, crying, and cursing. If you're going to
use proprietary software, don't expect anything better better support
than you had in the propriety world. If you use F/OSS and the community
isn't large enough to support itself yet, start contributing or pay
someone else to do it. There Ain't No Such Thing As a Free Lunch.
I'm personally in favor of installing compat libs by default as long as
someone it taking responsibility for handling security maintenance. I
would also love to see good technical suggestions. A few interesting
ideas have been suggested. But complaining isn't helpful. Arguing that
Fedora or any F/OSS developer is morally obliged to bend over backwards
to please users for free is repugnant. (BTW, if you think my attack and
characterization is unfair, so was yours.)
--
Stuart Jansen <sjansen(a)gurulabs.com>
Guru Labs, L.C.