Barry S. Finkel writes: > When I was working as a systems programmer with an IBM mainframe,
Interesting anecdote, but it addresses the wrong end of the issue. We already know that distros should keep their packages up to date. The question is why that doesn't happen. This: > When I was managing a Mailman installation, I kept Mailman > up-to-date, because I never knew when one of my lists would > encounter a bug that had already been fixed. leads to a more interesting question: And to which distribution did you contribute package control files to allow all the users of that distribution to benefit from your work? And did they immediately install them, or did their QA group dither about testing them for months? What we try to do in XEmacs is allow the upstream developer to commit directly to our package repository. But even then not all do, and we don't really have a QA process (except for beta testing, so in practice we're never out of beta for most packages :-). Few users are willing to contribute maintenance, although many contribute "first draft" patches and even whole packages. It's not an easy problem. ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
