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Re: What to do when DD considers policy to be optional? [kubernetes]



On 2020-04-08 22:36:17 +0200 (+0200), Thomas Goirand wrote:
[...]
> 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.
[...]

To be fair, the OpenStack community as a whole never suggested it
was stupid for distros to carry older versions of the software (many
folks there have experience packaging for and in LTS GNU/Linux
distributions too, so understand the pain). What was said is that
it's hard to find enough people with sufficient time to maintain
years-old versions of the software, thus the community looks to the
distributions' package maintainers to help shoulder some of that
burden, coordinate with each other on backporting fixes they need to
the versions they're carrying, and so on. What has typically been
laughed off as impractical is suggestions like not developing as
much software so quickly.

The OpenStack community also doesn't tell users who have questions
about 2+ year old versions of the software to go away until they
upgrade to the bleeding edge. However, it's only natural that if
users ask questions about old tech, they may find that the number of
folks still around who remember how it worked (beyond what's already
in the older versions of the software's documentation) will be
vanishingly small.
-- 
Jeremy Stanley

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