Re: Debian security support for older versions
On Sat, Mar 01, 2003 at 12:59:11PM +0100, Svenn Are Bjerkem wrote:
> On Friday 28 February 2003 11:26, Paul Johnson wrote:
> > Why is obscelesence somehow a surprise to people?
>
> Because you don't expect your vacuum cleaner to
> need a new hose every 3 years... ?
I don't think you could have chosen a worse analogy.
A vacuum cleaner is a commodity. For the most part, the design of
vacuum cleaners is rather complete; that is there are very few
revolutionary ideas in the vacuum cleaner industry. There's certainly
nothing like Moore's Law at work.
In fact, the only real reason you ever need to replace your vacuum
cleaner is because it is designed to wear out.
However, software is attempting to solve problems that are moving
targets. New technologies are invented every day that require new
software and/or changes to existing software. New problems are
discovered every day that require new software and/or changes to
existing software. On and on it goes.
In fact, if all existing software is "good enough", then there never
was a need for linux at all.
--
Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:nnorman@incanus.net
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin
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