Re: [boost] Should we provide hot fixes?

From: Dean Michael Berris (mikhailberis_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-08-18 23:24:57

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 8:11 AM, Robert Ramey <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> David Abrahams wrote:
>>
>> Your procedure --- more so than even Beman's original proposal which
>> has some of the same characteristic --- seems to ignore many users'
>> need for traditional point releases that are identical to a previous
>> release except for critical bugfixes.
>
> True
>

I think this is unfortunate.

>>I probably shouldn't be
>> complaining since it's to my benefit that people need Boostpro's
>> enterprise support contract in order to get that kind of update.
>
>  This allocates the cost of providing such a service to those who
> require and benefit from it while simplifying the job of the
> release manager.  This sounds like a good and fair solution to me.
>

This is assuming that there will only be one release manager for all
the releases.

I don't think this attitude of dismissing non-enterprise users of an
open source product is really a healthy one especially for a project
like Boost that has a huge following and plays a critical role in the
further advancement of C++. Although I have no problems with BoostPro
doing it for their customers, is it really that bad that the Boost
developers would rather leave that up to someone else to address
(which is providing bugfix releases)?

-- 
Dean Michael C. Berris
Software Engineer, Friendster, Inc.