[20664] in Athena Bugs
Re: netscape 6.23 disappeared?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (t. belton)
Thu Aug 29 14:40:20 2002
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 14:40:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: "t. belton" <tbelton@MIT.EDU>
To: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>
cc: <bug-infoagents@MIT.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <20020829182522.GJ19778@multics.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.33L.0208291430540.24898-100000@iphigenia.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Thu, 29 Aug 2002, John Hawkinson wrote:
> I have to say, philosophically this is poor.
> If you put it in a locker, people will use it. You should _not_
> remove it without announcing it, perhaps with a wrapper script
> or email or something. Remember, quota is almost infinite for you,
> and "we didn't have enough room for Mozilla and 6.23 together" is
> not an ok excuse...
Yeah, I kinda figured you'd say that :) This was actually not a
space-related drop; I'd have just gotten more quota. I did learn that
lesson already. I could have kept it AND Mozilla.
This was pulled deliberately. 6.23 was SO broken that I really did want to
keep people from being able to use it any longer. One example of many: We
can't easily tell it to put the cache in a safer location (key word is
"easily" and that's a long story I'll be happy to tell you some other day)
- which means that anytime anyone runs 6.23 they eat some of their home
locker quota. The less legacy of that we have floating around, the better.
And that is merely the tip of a five-month-long iceberg.
I don't imagine I'll be in this position again - where I am pulling a
browser because I believe it is literally toxic and unsafe at any speed -
but if I am, I will be sure to send notice before I yank the rug.
Apologies again.
- Todd
P.S. If anyone you know of absolutely needs 6.23 for some bizarre reason I
can't think of (a historical survey of broken browsers perhaps?), let me
know. It isn't actually deleted, I just moved it local.
