11 Feb 2003 Zaitcev   » (Master)

One point about the Sun Java memo which I do not see discussed is how a project never generates fixed releases, but incorporates fixes into new releases instead, together with scores of new bugs. Apparently, certain dynamics made this effect devastating for JRE on Solaris/sparc. This does not mean other projects in general and free software in particular are immune to it. My personal expirience suggests that GNOME suffers from this a great deal. Getting bugs wontfixed is the norm, probably because the monkey people have no resources to triage bugs, fix, QA and ship them (my last bug treated this way was 57453, though I recall it happening before).

For the Linux kernel, the whole problem is addressed with the dual-track odd/even releases, and with an economic model which allows vendors to support old kernels. The mechanism is imperfect still. For instance, Red Hat had to switch ancient 2.4.7 and old 2.4.9 based distros to 2.4.18 stream with an update, because it was not possible to retrofit fixes into those codebases, given the resources. I think what former Javasoft does may be likened to Red Hat shipping kernel 2.5.34, because it was "current" at the moment of the release. The scary part is that it's not impossible. My memory is getting fuzzy, but I think Red Hat shipped something like 2.1.59 once upon a time. I guess we improved a bit since then... I am sure Sun can improve, too, if only they wanted.

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