Re: RedHat 6.1 and Japanese

[Christopher Sekiya <wileyc@example.com>]

On Wed, Sep 06, 2000 at 04:14:48PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> I don't know.  It's irrelevant to my point.

Right, but it's crucial to my point.

> But putting together a system from all externally developed parts so
> that it installs and runs in a locale other than POSIX is a useful
> contribution, although it cannot be easily ported even to other Linux
> distros.

... and that's how they make money.

Let's say, for sake of argument, that packageX-v3 is discovered to have a
remotely-exploitable buffer overflow that turns out to be due to a fundamental
flaw in the code's design.

PackageX-v4 has been available for six months, so the developers of packageX 
recommend that affected users upgrade rather than patch up v3.

However ... packageX-v3 has been patched to handle Japanese, and packageX-v4
hasn't.

What would TL do?

They'd continue to ship packageX-v3, maybe with a half-assed security patch
that band-aids the problem rather than address the core issue[1].  They would
then wait for someone else to Japanize packageX-v4.

That is my point, and that's why I'm rather annoyed at TL.

-- Chris "yes, I'm cranky" Sekiya

[1] Canna patch being a case in point.