Re: Patch management tool

["Kurt Seifried" <bt () seifried org>]

It's called back porting. The reason they do it is because it makes QA a 
heck of a lot easier, imagine OpenSSH 3.5 -> 3.6 vs.s. OpenSSH 3.5 -> 
OpenSSH 3.5 plus a 50 line patch. Which is less likely to behave in new (an 
unexpected) ways? It also makes customers a lot easier, I have a commercial 
app that depends on version X of foo, now it may work with version X.1, but 
it might not. Personally I'd rather not find out. Back porting is the only 
sane alternative if you have several hundred packages that require active 
maintenance, QA, and don't want to annoy customers.

Kurt Seifried, kurt () seifried org
A15B BEE5 B391 B9AD B0EF
AEB0 AD63 0B4E AD56 E574
http://seifried.org/security/




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