Proposed udpates policy change

[Al Dunsmuir]

Hello Krzysztof,

Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 3:36:43 PM, you wrote:

> Matthew Garrett <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org> writes:

>> 2) It is impossible to ensure that functionality will not be reduced
>> without sufficient testing.

> True.

The  whole  point  of  an  update  may  be  the  deliberate removal of
features/functionality.   This  includes  removal  of  elements  whose
upstream is dead, removal of conflicts between packages, conversion of
static/copied  libraries  to  the  system provided library, removal of
features  which  are irretrievably broken, and those elements which do
not  fit  within  Fedora's  licence/mission  (mp3 support, or patented
material).

>> 3) Sufficient testing of software inherently requires manual
>> intervention by more than one individual.

> Definitely. IOW, the testing is never sufficient.

Any  nontrivial  piece  of  software  contains  bugs  until it reaches
end-of-life.   This  is a simple fact of life.

You  can't  test  quality  into  a  product  like Fedora. You can only
attempt  to  assist developers in discovering issues that have escaped
their  unit  tests, so that through iterations of design/code/test the
package becomes stable and feature complete. It takes many iterations,
across many releases for some packages.

>> 1) Updates to stable that result in any reduction of functionality to
>> the user are unacceptable.

An absolute rule containing "any" ignores reality.

> That means any and all updates are unacceptable.
> -- 
> Krzysztof Halasa

The  opposite  of  change is death. No updates as a hard and fast rule
would drive many users and packages away from Fedora.