[ Linus Torvalds, Mittwoch 04 Februar 2009 ] > Yes, they may "technically" be the people with the most information, but > they are also the ones furthest removed from actual users - by definition. > And they are also the ones that are most emotionally (and often > financially) tied to things like "newest version". > > There are _lots_ of examples of software people deciding to leave an old > version behind, despite the fact that essentially all users want to use > it. And yes, there are examples of those software people not doing > security fixes to the old version, because they want to "encourage" their > users to go to the new-and-improved version.
I fully agree that there is no other way than to let the user decide whether or not to install security updates automatically. Apart from situations where developers are focussing too much on the newest version, there is also the topic of bleeding-edge distributions that always distribute the newest version to the users (independent of whether the upstream developers still release bugfixes and security updates for earlier versions). In both cases, users need to be able to not install updates. Of course neither the software developers nor the distributions have an interest in screwing the users, but it is clear that they do not have identical interests with the user (or with each other) either. Many of the practical problems could actually be dealt with by having better communication between the distributions and upstream teams (as well as among upstream teams). My impression is that we (the Open Source development community as a whole) are slowly improving here, but that progress in this area is not always quick and not always steady. Olaf _______________________________________________ Desktop_architects mailing list [email protected] https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_architects
