On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 11:15:07AM -0700, Harry wrote:
> Not everyone needs or wants, or even can install a brand new distribution
> every six months - especially given the historical issues of stability and
> quality of first releases by mandrake during the last three such releases.
> Providing such critical updates as a service to your existing users should
> not cost much additional resources, but can potentially create much
> good-will, and much stronger brand loyalty from users who use Mandrake for
> production class hosting.
I have to disagree with the statement that it doesn't take much effort
to do the updates you request. I've been on the security team helping
Vincent and the rest of the crew test the security updates. It does
indeed take a lot of work to get the updates ready for general
consuption. First Vincent has to make it. Then he gives it to us to
test and we try it on all the platforms it's for (possibly 7.1, 7.2, and
8.0). After sometimes several iterations with us due to problems,
Vincent sends it to QA for more testing. After they approve it and any
changes they need are done it is released.
Quite a few people are involved in putting out those releases, more than
it is apparent to you. Doing general upgrades to Apache, PHP, and the
like would likely create many dependancies like you've already pointed
out all of which would have to be packaged and tested. It's just not
worth it.
Besides if you really need a newer version, you can always download and
compile the source package.
--
Ben Reser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://ben.reser.org
Wizard's First Rule - People are stupid, they will believe anything
if they want it to be true or they fear it is true - Terry Goodkind
