Hello?
On Aug 30, 2010, at 11:13 PM, Andre Zepezauer wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> what do you think of dropping the possibility to initialise CardOS smart
> cards in 0.11.14? The reason of doing so, is to stop the production of
> more of these questionable split-key cards.
What would be the rationale of doing it? I don't think turning it off is a good
idea, but a fat warning ("Use a more recent version!") could be used, if
justified and needed (why?).
> People who want to initialise CardOS are then forced to do this with
> either 0.11.13 or 0.12.X. Hopefully they chose the newer release,
> because it comes with an improved initialisation for CardOS. No more
> split-keys here! Cards initialised with 0.12.0 should work with the
> 0.11.X releases too. Verification of this fact is required of cause.
I believe documentation is important here.
Due to the nature of smart cards, backwards-compatibility for already
personalized cards is greatly desired and a topmost priority.
At the same time, personalization happens far less frequently than use, so such
restriction could, in theory, make sense as well (requiring newer software for
personalization but working with older software in read-only mode)
> Another fact is that for example Ubuntu 10.04 and Debian Squeeze will
> stay with the 0.11.X branches for at least the next three years. The
> same holds for other distributions with a long release cycle (RHEL has
> seven years of support I think). The imagination that someone could
> easily produce new split-key cards for the next few years isn't very
> appealing to me.
We can't fix what we can't affect. That is Linux distribution release schedules
or decisions done between the chair and the keyboard. We need to make the
choices and circumstances clear and well documented though.
--
Martin Paljak
@martinpaljak.net
+3725156495
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