Re: [RFC] -stable, how it's going to work.

From: Neil Brown
Date: Thu Mar 10 2005 - 20:54:54 EST


On Thursday March 10, arjan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-03-10 at 21:00 +1100, Neil Brown wrote:
> > One rule that I thought would make sense, but that I don't see listed
> > is:
> >
> > - must fix a regression
> >
> > If some problem was in 2.6.X and is still there in 2.6.X+1, then there
> > is no great rush to fix it for 2.6.(X+1).1, it can wait for 2.6.(X+2).
>
> this is tricky. I mean, what if it's a datacorruption thing? Sure older
> kernels may have it too... yet at the same time it'd be nice to get it
> fixed. And once you go down this slipperly slope you end up with the
> original ruleset again, eg it must be "somehow relatively important".
>

My position is that
- there are lots of things that "it'd be nice to get it fixed", and
that is what 2.6.X is for
- It is a very slippery slope
- No one expect Linux to be perfect. But people do expect it to get
better without getting worse. It is precisely to fix this
expectation that (I understand) 2.6.x.y was created.

If a data corruption bug has been there for 10 weeks without being
noticed, then the real risk is not that great. We are calling it
"-release", not "-hardened".

Just my shilling-and-six worth.

NeilBrown
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