fedora mission (was Re: systemd and changes)

[Michal Hlavinka]

...
> So in other words, dependency 1.6 to 1.6.1 is okay as it is likely a
> bug fix, but 1.6 to 1.8 is not okay because it is a new release.

there's no reason why 1.8 won't be ok after 2-3 weeks in updates-testing

> >So, web developers want latest httpd/PHP/Rails/MySQL; GNOME developers
> >want latest gtk/libgnome*; and so on.
> 
> I wouldn't be so sure about that.
> 
> If I was developing a web application I would want my version of
> httpd/PHP/Rails/MySQL to remain stable - the last thing I want is a
> bug to appear in the application I am writing and have to wonder if it
> is a problem with my code or did the update in my framework change
> something on me.

If you develop some app you want to catch bugs in your app as fast as possible 
because you don't want release something that is broken just because there is 
newer library out there.

Also my own experience: I wanted webmail client with some set of features the 
only client (except too big hordce imp) was latest roundcube. I had to package 
it myselfs because it was not even in latest fedora and then update all 
dendencies because it was not working with ancient php centos5 provides. I 
know Fedora is much "faster" than CentOS, but still... there's no reason why 
we should not update packages to newer *stable* release


> >Similarly, everyone who cares about the tools they use daily (which
> >developers tend to), wants the best versions of these tools, as soon as
> >it is practical.  So, newest version of emacs/vim/kdevelop/...
> 
> Again, as a developer I would disagree.  

Again, as a developer I would agree with Miloslav

> >The result is a distribution on which it is reasonably easy to develop
> >current software, and a distribution on which one might not update
> >critical system updates on the night before giving a presentation on a
> >conference (FWIW, I can't recall a really bad updates experience).  That
> >doesn't seem to be a bad tradeoff - for a developer.
> 
> So lets see, you are going to give a presentation or attend a
> conference, where you will likely be using an unsecured network with
> many threats that likely don't exist in your home or office
> environment, and you are saying that because we have a distrubition
> where anything can change and possibly break things you think it is
> okay that you have to forgo critical system updates that might prevent
> your system from being hacked?  How can that be viewed as an
> acceptable tradeoff?

That package won't be ancient old, so the risk is small to almost zero. You'd 
understand the tradeoff better after first not working presentation you've tried 
to do. I won't update nothing day or two before presentation even from current 
fedora/centos/...