[Fwd: Wikipidia - Goodbye Red Hat and Fedora]

[Les Mikesell]

Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> 
>>>> Is there similar outrage against upstreams as well?  Where is it?
>> On this list, it's shouted down.  I commented some time ago about the
>> rather toxic behavior of the python developers vis-a-vis breaking
>> compatibility at virtually every release.  You would have thought that I
>> had urinated in the holy water.
>>
>> It's an ugly little wart on the free software movement.  There's nowhere
>> near the incentive to take care of your user base without a direct
>> financial gain.  Not, mind you, that commercial ventures haven't done
>> the same, but the consequences to them are more severe and direct.
> 
> You don't get to dictate what the upstream project's priorities are.

But it should be something open for discussion, and something considered 
when integrating a package into a distribution and when/if the 
incompatible changes should be propagated.

> If you don't like the fact that apps break with every new python
> release (I don't like it either), then pick a different programming
> language with an upstream whose priorities better align with your
> needs. eg, Perl or Java or OCaml or any number of other languages.

That decision would be a lot more obvious if the history of backwards 
compatibility of a project was tracked publicly, perhaps with the 
packagers of affected apps keeping track of the time they spend just to 
maintain functionality.  That would help a new user decide where to 
invest his own time.

> Open source is about freedom of choice & that applies to everyone,
> users, developers, packagers alike. The python developers/community
> have decided the level of stability they want between each of their
> releases - they decided to accept a certain level of breakage. You
> have the freedom to decide whether this matches your needs and if 
> not, no one is forcing you to use python.

It is pretty hard not to use python in a fedora or RH-based distro.   Or 
to use any other version than what the distro updates to internally - 
which means that any 3rd party or local additions will take extra work 
to keep precisely in step.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com