Upcoming Releases

[Arthur Chance]

On 10/03/2016 14:24, Kevin P. Neal wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 08:59:18AM +0000, Arthur Chance wrote:
>> It's always worth remembering the old bit of computing folklore that IBM 
>> defined "the lunatic fringe" as those who took the x.0 release of any 
>> software.
>>
>> When 11.0 comes out I'll wait a week to see if there are any loud 
>> screams and then try it out on my desktop, as boot environments make it 
>> easy to roll back. If it tests out OK, then I'll deploy it to my 
>> servers. Unlike many other pieces of software, I've rarely had any 
>> problems with an x.0 release of FBSD, which says a lot about the release 
>> team's competence. Most of the problems I've seen raised come from 
>> people not reading the release notes properly, like the "what's happened 
>> to bind?" problems with 10.0.
> 
> The unfortunate thing is that not running a ".0" release only works out
> well if fraction of the people avoid it. If everyone avoids it then the
> ".1" release becomes the new ".0" release.
> 

Firstly it was a joke about the quality of IBM software back in the days
when they thought they owned the market whatever they did.

Secondly, it's my experience that the "lunatic fringe" is a sizeable
fraction of users (me included) - there are a significant number round
here who test beta releases as well.

-- 
Moore's Law of Mad Science: Every eighteen months, the minimum IQ
necessary to destroy the world drops by one point.