[clue-tech] WS upgrades

[David L. Anselmi]

Collins Richey wrote:
> On 11/18/05, David L. Anselmi <anselmi at anselmi.us> wrote:
> 
>>Maybe someday I'll run custom and proprietary apps on Debian testing
>>(upgraded weekly/monthly), make it work no matter what, and write a
>>paper about whether that's a better way to go and what the apps have to
>>do to play nice.  (If there are any proprietary apps you can buy to run
>>on Debian.)
>>
> Should be interesting to see what Ubuntu does with their "pseudo"
> enterprise releases. Debian without the attitude, and supposedly
> guaranteed updates over a longer period.

No, "enterprise" is what I'd like to avoid.  Do you see the kernel 
hackers supporting 2.4?  No, they fix bugs in 2.6 now.  Same deal for 
packages.  To me, the Debian security team is a waste of time.[0]

Perhaps there's a parallel between "supported releases" and the kernel 
ABI (the thing modules hook into).  But the kernel hackers and distros 
seem to be taking opposite approaches.[1]

>>It shouldn't be impossible--Debian does it for all their apps.  Good
>>argument to avoid proprietary software.
> 
> Yeah, but most companies of more than a few employees line up to pay
> the big bucks to get proprietary Linux and apps, so go figure. Tis
> better to pay through the nose for service contracts for that one time
> in 20 years where you might actually need service from the vendor. So
> thinketh the CIOs and bean counters and lawyers anyway.

It's a shame.  I'm usually tempted to answer "I need help with RHEL..." 
with "didn't you pay Red Hat to answer that?"  Maybe I'm missing the 
point.  But imagine how quick your bug would get fixed if you called up 
the developer and said "I'll pay you a year of RH support to fix this 
bug for me".  Well, ok, I don't know what RH costs...

Dave

[0] I have the highest respect for the Debian security team.  But they 
(mostly) only make security fixes for stable and I don't use that.  Not 
to denigrate stable or anyone using it, just wishing for a better world.

[1] e.g. http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/stable_api_nonsense.html (but be 
careful, he has attitude too ;-)

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