Res: Open Letter: Why I, Kevin Kofler, am not rerunning for FESCo

[Peter Jones]

On 05/04/2010 02:14 PM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Jesse Keating wrote:
>> This involved doing another build of the package, which could
>> involve changes in the buildroot and anomalies in the build
>> process. Ask DaveJ some time about what happened to his kernel
>> builds when the build host did a clock adjustment during the build.
>> Shit happens, and making assumptions that just because the build
>> completed that nothing went wrong is a great way to make a fool of
>> yourself.
> 
> Some risks are so low that they're basically negligible.

Sure, but if the chance of any given thing going wrong - i.e. doing a
build that successfully produces a package that doesn't do what you
meant for it to - is .005, and there are 20 of those things which are
serious enough to be a problem, that's a 10% chance of a major problem.
(to say nothing of the myriad of things that can cause minor problems.)

> If the 2 options are keeping an existing regression (which missed
> testing) in updates for a few more days or risking the off chance
> that there MAY be another regression with a probability of 1 in a
> million or something in that order of magnitude, I'll take the risk
> any day! If that kind of risk is too high for you, I hope you don't
> ever use a car, it might crash, you know?

It's nice that you'll take the risk, but it sure would be nice to
shield the *users* of our software from this irrational bravado.

-- 
        Peter

RFC 882 put the dots in .com.