Re: Security upgrade for potato by new major version and distro change?
On Wed, Jan 24, 2001 at 10:00:49AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> Christian> Debian has many maintainers who cannot programm or like me
> Christian> can programm perl and php (well enough to get paid for) it
> Christian> but have not much experience with C.
> Christian> Those people can do nothing about a c++ security fix
> Christian> except crying out loud for help. (that came quickly by
> Christian> better maintainers)
> Christian> You (plural, not you personally) can fire "us" or see that
> Christian> we're a well copntribution to the project.
>
> If the maintainer does not know C/C++, then they really have
> no business packaging a C/C++ programme. Debian is supposed to be
> more than a repository of everything out there (or a cool email
> address). It is also supposed to be about quality. If you do not
> understand the language your package is written in, it is highly
> unlikely your stewardship of that package is goging to be anything
> but mediocre.
You're right in the general case, but I believe Christian was referring to
being unable to backport a security patch in mysql. Just "knowing" a
language wouldn't quite be sufficient to be able to do that. He did the
right thing by asking for help -- that's hell of a lot better than ignoring
the problem or doing the job lousy. (Both of which aren't unheard of,
unfortunately.)
--
Digital Electronic Being Intended for Assassination and Nullification
Reply to: