[18581] in Athena Bugs
Re: linux 8.4.17: netscape
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (t. belton)
Mon Dec 4 11:31:21 2000
Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2000 11:31:16 -0500 (EST)
From: "t. belton" <tbelton@MIT.EDU>
To: Karl Ramm <kcr@1ts.org>
cc: "Aaron M. Ucko" <amu@mit.edu>, <bugs@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <uusaeacj1nh.fsf@ORTHANC.MIT.EDU>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.30L.0012041119480.7843-100000@iphigenia.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On 3 Dec 2000, Karl Ramm wrote:
> It's not entirely unreasonable to think the IS might want to have multiple
> version of netscape in the infoagents locker; they could, say, freeze-dry
> the netscape version for older linuces and stop maintaining it for them.
> It's not like they're short of disk space or anything.
Actually, we are. :) Oh, it's temporary - I'm putting off making Yet
Another Quota Request - but really, it's long since gotten ridiculous. The
linux binaries, for reasons I'm unclear on, are by far the largest
binaries of any of the three unixes we support in that locker. Every time
we decide to leave another version up for linux, I end up requesting a
quota increase. I believe - quota and other things considered - that there
should be a finite cutoff on the number of Netscape versions supported in
that locker, and that cutoff should be relatively low - three versions,
tops.
I realize it sounds appealing to "freeze-dry" a version and say that it's
offered as-is, with no support, but in practice that doesn't work - people
will demand a certain level of support anyway, and it's a pain in the
neck. Look at Netscape 3. We can't quite get rid of it and we wish people
didn't still use it and ask questions about it, but they do.
In my opinion, infoagents should be the source for ONE really sturdy,
stable, relatively up-to-date version of Netscape per platform.
Unfortunately we're losing on the "sturdy and stable" part right now - and
some of that can't be helped, it's Netscape's fault - but adding extra
versions won't make the problem better. At least I don't think so.
-todd
