Re: New policies?

[Dave Sherohman <dave@sherohman.org>]

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 04:48:44PM -0600, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> For the irksome case where a proprietary protocol is changed out from under 
> Free Software in a stable release, Debian has already had a mechanism for 
> fixing this, for a while.
> 
> First, the change required to support the changes in the protocol are applied 
> to the stable version of the software.  Then, after some internal testing, a 
> VUA ts published and the updated Debian package is uploaded to volatile.  
> Concurrently, this update might also be published to stable-proposed-updates.  
> If there are complaints with the new package, these are addressed in the same 
> repositories.  Assuming the package is in good shape by the next point 
> release, the new package is included in that point release.
...
> This is similar to a security update in some ways, but it doesn't have a 
> dedicated team and repository mainly due to the relative importance.  The 
> sticking point is largely the same, too; the fix must be "cherry-picked" / 
> "backported" to the version of the software that is in Debian.  If no one will 
> do that work, that is proof of lack of interest in the bug fix.

...and *this* is why I love Debian.  "Stable" is rock-solid without
bringing in all the new features (and their accompanying new bugs) every
time that upstream drops a new "latest and greatest" version.  Aside
from once every couple of years, it doesn't change except to address
major problems and, even then, the change is limited to only the fix for
the problem instead of adopting unrelated updates just because they're
there.

-- 
Dave Sherohman