Subject: Re: No Distribution is 2.0.0 Current

From: [email-masked] (David Engel)
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 11:43:20 -0500 (CDT)

Jeffery S. Coy Jr. writes:
> On Sat, 29 Jun 1996, David Engel wrote:
> > Debian's version of libc 5.2.18 has the security fix plus a few other
> > fixes.  I really wish H.J. would continue to fix serious bugs in the
> > last stable libc while the new one is still in alpha/beta testing.
> 
> i thought libc 5.3.12 had been publicly released as stable some time ago.
> is this library being ignored due to doug lea's malloc, or is it
> something else?

To clarify, I wasn't implying that libc 5.2.18 was the last stable
release.  I know that 5.3.12 was released some time ago.  Debian isn't
using it because we didn't want risk introducing any instabilities
when we were trying to releas Debian 1.1.

> i think we are all a little more wary after libc 5.3.9's .rhost bug.
> but i agree, it would be nice if patches for important bugs were made
> available for proven libraries such as lib 5.2.18, rather than push the
> bleeding edge stuff so hard.

Right.  I've been saying for a long time now that Linux' huge growth
makes stability a lot more important than it used to be.  When an
important problem is found in libc, we can't keep telling people to
upgrade to the current beta version.  It may fix the original problem
but will several others.

David
-- 
David Engel                        Optical Data Systems, Inc.
[email-masked]                      1101 E. Arapaho Road
(214) 234-6400                     Richardson, TX  75081