Re: What to do when DD considers policy to be optional? [kubernetes]
On 4/8/20 6:14 PM, Marc Haber wrote:
> On Sun, 5 Apr 2020 23:16:51 +0100, Wookey <wookey@wookware.org> wrote:
>> On 2020-04-05 21:15 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
>>> having an obsolete version of the software distributed
>>> with/through Debian is (rightfully) seen a liabilty by some upstreams,
>>> not as an asset.
>>
>> I think a more interesting/important question is whether users like
>> it, rather than whether upstreams like it.
>
> I think it is also important to have our users be taken seriously by
> upstreams. There is software that doesn't move as fast any more. Using
> a two years old version of those is often fine.
>
> Kubernetes, docker etc, however, are fast moving targets. Nobody in
> the uptream community is willing to even consider answering a question
> about a version that is two years old. The dialog will inevitably be
> "well, first you update to our latest version and verify whether your
> question still applies, then come back with your question" "but I am
> using the version in Debian stable!" "well, Debian is stupid! Use
> <other distribution instead>".
>
> This is not doing our users a favor. And it hurts the Project.
I don't agree with this *at all*. It is not in the interest of our users
to be forced to update the software they use for their infrastructure
every few months. They don't want that. If upstream think that this is
what users want, well upstream is wrong then. And the stability of
Debian (understand: not a moving target, rather than bug free) is one of
our very good point.
Also, the docker world is not the only one to be this way. It used to be
like this in OpenStack too. In the OpenStack world, they haven't changed
the way they release (ie: every 6 months), but the user survey has shown
that almost every user is lagging 4 or 5 versions behind, because
upgrading the infrastructure is both difficult and time consuming. Over
time, they became very helpful for back-porting fixes to EOL versions too.
The main issue is that upstream wants to be able to do fast development,
and focus on the development rather than on their users. Taking care of
a long term release is time consuming. Taking care of multiple old
release is very annoying (backporting fixes may not be always obvious).
So yeah, probably upstream will reply with "Debian is stupid". Let them
say it if they want to: that doesn't make them right. It only shows they
are completely ignorant of what their users want, and the need of
downstream distributions.
The more there's going to be users going at them asking them about a 2
year old release, the more they will realize that Debian isn't stupid,
and that this is the way the final users want to consume their work. So
it's good for us, and beneficial to the project. It's doing our users a
favor, and it doesn't hurt us.
>> Quite a lot of users just want to use stuff and so long as it works
>> for their purposes they really don't know or care if it is 2 years
>> old.
>
> And if it doesnt they want to be able to google for their issues or
> ask the upstream community. You cannot ask the kubernetes community a
> question about a kubernetes version that is two years old.
Of course you can! If they choose to not answer, or say bad things about
Debian, that doesn't make them smarter and us stupid. It just shows how
careless upstream is.
>> I quite often find myself in this situation. Quite a lot of
>> software is not something you want to care about - you just want to
>> use it.
>
> Quite a lot, yes. But there is software that doesn't work that way.
Could you please explain why any software would be different? It's just
upstream that has a super ego and think they are different. Nothing
more, nothing less.
>> So long as most users will find it works for them, then I think it's
>> still really useful for us to package stuff,
>
> That is not going to happen with kubernetes, docker, node.js et al at
> this current time.
Like many other software stack, hopefully they will learn by this
mistake and the release management will change.
Cheers,
Thomas Goirand (zigo)
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