On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 11:03:07AM -0500, David G. Mackay wrote:
On Wed, 2008-10-22 at 08:39 -0500, Rex Dieter wrote:
Unanswered:
Is there similar outrage against upstreams as well? Where is it?
On this list, it's shouted down. I commented some time ago about the rather toxic behavior of the python developers vis-a-vis breaking compatibility at virtually every release. You would have thought that I had urinated in the holy water.
It's an ugly little wart on the free software movement. There's nowhere near the incentive to take care of your user base without a direct financial gain. Not, mind you, that commercial ventures haven't done the same, but the consequences to them are more severe and direct.
You don't get to dictate what the upstream project's priorities are. If you don't like the fact that apps break with every new python release (I don't like it either), then pick a different programming language with an upstream whose priorities better align with your needs. eg, Perl or Java or OCaml or any number of other languages. Open source is about freedom of choice & that applies to everyone, users, developers, packagers alike. The python developers/community have decided the level of stability they want between each of their releases - they decided to accept a certain level of breakage. You have the freedom to decide whether this matches your needs and if not, no one is forcing you to use python.
Daniel