On Thursday 27 January 2005 10:27, Tom Lane wrote: > Robert Treat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > I don't think it is worth breaking the expectation that only minor > > changes get committed in revision level releases even with a beta. > > Ordinarily I would agree with you, but what happens to someone who is > still running 8.0.* when IBM's patent gets issued? (It seems very > likely to me that the patent will be issued before 8.0 disappears from > the wild.) We really have to have an answer for that, and that means > that an algorithm change has to get back-patched into 8.0.*. >
This is a straw-man, since nothing stops people from running 8.0.0 even if the replacement come in 8.0.1 > I'm coming around to the viewpoint that we should do this as a > back-patch rather than try to release a file-compatible 8.1. The reason > is that people who are hesitant to move up to a new release are hesitant > not only because of dump/reload costs; they also worry about whether a > new version will break their existing applications. If 8.1 has a pile > of new features, or even simple behavioral changes such as flipping the > with_oids default, then it will look like a hazard to them even without > a dump/reload cycle. > Some people get scared of changes between even minor revision releases even when we tell them it is safe to do. (Of course pushing a change like ARC out in a minor release isn't going to help do away with that perception) Sticking to a two-month/no-initdb cycle, I don't think we'll have to worry about "piles-of-changes" that make things incompatible. > What's really being debated here is how we can have adequate confidence > in a change that is admittedly larger than we like to back-patch. It's > not an unprecedented thing mind you; we have back-patched some fairly > large bug fixes in the past. But it's a bit galling to be taking any > such risk for purely legal rather than technical reasons. > Especially when it doesn't even effect everyone involved. Or anyone... who knows, maybe oracle is out submitting prior art and the thing never even gets granted. -- Robert Treat Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq