From owner-freebsd-security Wed Apr 11 12:36:59 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-security@freebsd.org Received: from roble.com (mx0.roble.com [206.40.34.14]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 361BB37B422 for ; Wed, 11 Apr 2001 12:36:57 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from marquis@roble.com) Received: from localhost (marquis@localhost) by roble.com with ESMTP id f3BJavs53574 for ; Wed, 11 Apr 2001 12:36:57 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 12:36:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Roger Marquis To: security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Security Announcements & Incremental Patches In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Scott Johnson wrote: > There is a difference between security fixes and a 'more low-key and > conservative set of changes intended for our next mainstream release'. I think this is a point many posters are missing. Production systems administration has to be conservative. A good systems administrator would *NEVER* run cvsup or -STABLE on a revenue generating production server for example. Change deltas must be kept to a minimum to minimize the risk of downtime or application problems. > I just want to add my voice as to how I use FreeBSD. Simply saying 'use > - -STABLE' to those of us running -RELEASE on production systems isn't > appropriate, Agreed. It might be worthwhile to point out that Linux is gaining market share by leaps and bounds while FreeBSD's user base remains relatively stagnant for *exactly* this reason. This is all IMHO. Perhaps I'm just spoiled by Solaris' patch process. Yet we have seen a significant increase in Sun purchases thanks to their Blade 100 and it's $1000 price (headless). The FreeBSD community has to make the choice: do you want to FreeBSD to be a great developer's OS and an also-ran production platform (Dag-Erling Smorgrav's "submit patches or shut up") or would it be better in the long term to shift some resources (like incremental security patches) in order to boost market share? -- Roger Marquis Roble Systems Consulting http://www.roble.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message