Changing kernel API / Breaking VirtualBox - update criteria violation?

[Thomas Moschny]

2011/11/22 Matthew Garrett <mjg at redhat.com>:
> If you interpret "The ABI" as "Any property of the binary that another
> package could conceivably depend on" then your position makes sense. But
> since nobody would interpret it that way, the obvious conclusion is that
> "The ABI" means "The supported ABI". Attempting to codify this more
> precisely would just encourage language lawyering, which is exactly what
> we were trying to avoid when we generated this policy. Use common sense.

If you replace "conveivably" by "commonly" or "reasonably" than I'd
say more people than "nobody" would expect the updates policy to
prevent such changes.

Of course I buy the argument that we as the Fedora community don't
have enough resources to backport each and every kernel bugfix. That
is a completely valid point, and if the outcome is that under these
constraints things are how they are and the ABI changes, than this is
ok.

That said, you are still obliged by the updates policy to think about
the effects of an update (of each update) and weigh pros and cons like
every other packager. Saying yes we did that long time ago occurs a
bit rude to me.

- Thomas