[Zope-dev] Re: Zope 2.6 branch "closed for bugfixes"?

[Tres Seaver]

Chris Withers wrote:
> Tres Seaver wrote:
> 
>> Chris,
>>
>> I would call the 2.6 branch "closed except for serious security bugs"; 
>> please don't check in new features or minor bugfixes there.
> 
> 
> How come? and was this announced anywhere?

See the last topic in:

   http://dev.zope.org/CVS/ZopeDevelopmentProcess

> I don't see what harm applying minor bugfixes to any release branch 
> could do...

   - It is a well-established principle of software engineering that the
     most likely source of new bugs in mature code is fixes for old ones.

   - People who are still running 2.6 in production are demonstrably
     risk-averse (and often for good reason).  Adding non-critical fixes
     to the "mature" branch increases the amount of risk involved in
     upgrading production sites, which they typically won't do except to
     close major security vulnerabilities.

   - If something comes up which forces us to make a 2.6.5 release,
     keeping the diff from 2.6.4 as small as possible is a real goal
     for the release manager, who must communicate with the risk-averse
     sysadmins.

   - As a parallel, think about the kinds of changes you want to see
     *today* to the 2.2 Linux kernel:  if you are still running sites on
     2.2, you definitely don't want *any* non-essential fixes being
     backported there.

Tres.
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Tres Seaver                                tseaver at zope.com
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