On Mon, 20 Jul 2020, Richard Troy wrote:
> List member Oliver Nicole rightly makes the following observations - here
> excerpted - about the apparently not just proposed but apparently certain to
> happen changes to this project which will negatively impact a great many
> people, with a few in-line comments for context before my conclusion. To wit:
>
>> From: Olivier <Olivier.Nicole@cs.ait.ac.th>
>
> [ ... lots deleted, this is just an excerpt ... ]
>
>> Most likely they will not see the message about the obsolescence, and
>> one day, when compatibilty is over, their stuff will stop working and
>> there will be no way to solve that ecvept to painfully go back to an
>> older version of SA or manually go through all the problems of all the
>> angry users.
>
> As a system administrator for some 37 years, and as someone who has acted in
> a support or consulting capacity to others in such role(s) for well over 30
> years, I can tell you this observation is quite correct. In fact, this is the
> dominant circumstance, by far.
>
> VERY importantly, nobody wants to be stuck on old versions, as Oliver
> proposes will happen (and he's right about that), and so this puts system
> administrators in a VERY difficult position - a position I'd venture the
> proponents don't really understand. The choice is one painful one versus
> another painful one. Only someone who's actually been there really gets it.
>
>> If you offer compatibility with only a warning message, most people will
>> ignore (or simply not see) that message and do nothing. And when the
>> compatibility is over, they will be facing a wall, just the same as if
>> there were no compatibility period. You are just pushing the mayhem back
>> by one year.
>
> I'd argue that most won't see it coming at all, though there is, of course,
> no way to prove that. But it's simple human nature; when we are overloaded,
> as nearly 100% of us perpetually are, we ignore a LOT of warnings we should
> have, with our better selves, seen coming, from our health issues like cancer
> to our children's issues to computer log files, it's just what happens; we're
> simply so busy in our daily lives just trying to get by that we miss signs we
> could have seen. The VAST majority of us are in economic instability,
> especially with the effects of this Covid-19 pandemic; to expect us to be
> paying close attention to warnings in logs is objectively silly. (Perhaps the
> proponents of this change are simply too comfortable in their economics and
> too isolated from actual users to see these truths.)
>
> ...I believe the above makes the case for why backwards-compatibility needs
> to be maintained into perpetuity, but Oliver actually suggests a neat way to
> solve this AND the political problem that openly saying that would create. He
> writes:
**THIS** is why I called a vote for publicly committing to permanent
backwards compatibility and why I am so painfully dismayed that Kevin
seems to be so set against it.
Kevin, will you *please* reconsider your position, in the interests of the
*USERS*?
Would offering backwards compatibility behind a config option (as Oliver
suggests), and which is never removed absent a compelling technical
reason, be a reasonable compromise?
--
John Hardin KA7OHZ http://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/
jhardin@impsec.org FALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhardin@impsec.org
key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
If the rock of doom requires a gentle nudge away from Gaia to
prevent a very bad day for Earthlings, NASA won?t be riding to the
rescue. These days, NASA does dodgy weather research and outreach
programs, not stuff in actual space with rockets piloted by
flinty-eyed men called Buzz. -- Daily Bayonet
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Today: the 51st anniversary of Man's first steps on the Moon
> List member Oliver Nicole rightly makes the following observations - here
> excerpted - about the apparently not just proposed but apparently certain to
> happen changes to this project which will negatively impact a great many
> people, with a few in-line comments for context before my conclusion. To wit:
>
>> From: Olivier <Olivier.Nicole@cs.ait.ac.th>
>
> [ ... lots deleted, this is just an excerpt ... ]
>
>> Most likely they will not see the message about the obsolescence, and
>> one day, when compatibilty is over, their stuff will stop working and
>> there will be no way to solve that ecvept to painfully go back to an
>> older version of SA or manually go through all the problems of all the
>> angry users.
>
> As a system administrator for some 37 years, and as someone who has acted in
> a support or consulting capacity to others in such role(s) for well over 30
> years, I can tell you this observation is quite correct. In fact, this is the
> dominant circumstance, by far.
>
> VERY importantly, nobody wants to be stuck on old versions, as Oliver
> proposes will happen (and he's right about that), and so this puts system
> administrators in a VERY difficult position - a position I'd venture the
> proponents don't really understand. The choice is one painful one versus
> another painful one. Only someone who's actually been there really gets it.
>
>> If you offer compatibility with only a warning message, most people will
>> ignore (or simply not see) that message and do nothing. And when the
>> compatibility is over, they will be facing a wall, just the same as if
>> there were no compatibility period. You are just pushing the mayhem back
>> by one year.
>
> I'd argue that most won't see it coming at all, though there is, of course,
> no way to prove that. But it's simple human nature; when we are overloaded,
> as nearly 100% of us perpetually are, we ignore a LOT of warnings we should
> have, with our better selves, seen coming, from our health issues like cancer
> to our children's issues to computer log files, it's just what happens; we're
> simply so busy in our daily lives just trying to get by that we miss signs we
> could have seen. The VAST majority of us are in economic instability,
> especially with the effects of this Covid-19 pandemic; to expect us to be
> paying close attention to warnings in logs is objectively silly. (Perhaps the
> proponents of this change are simply too comfortable in their economics and
> too isolated from actual users to see these truths.)
>
> ...I believe the above makes the case for why backwards-compatibility needs
> to be maintained into perpetuity, but Oliver actually suggests a neat way to
> solve this AND the political problem that openly saying that would create. He
> writes:
**THIS** is why I called a vote for publicly committing to permanent
backwards compatibility and why I am so painfully dismayed that Kevin
seems to be so set against it.
Kevin, will you *please* reconsider your position, in the interests of the
*USERS*?
Would offering backwards compatibility behind a config option (as Oliver
suggests), and which is never removed absent a compelling technical
reason, be a reasonable compromise?
--
John Hardin KA7OHZ http://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/
jhardin@impsec.org FALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhardin@impsec.org
key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
If the rock of doom requires a gentle nudge away from Gaia to
prevent a very bad day for Earthlings, NASA won?t be riding to the
rescue. These days, NASA does dodgy weather research and outreach
programs, not stuff in actual space with rockets piloted by
flinty-eyed men called Buzz. -- Daily Bayonet
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Today: the 51st anniversary of Man's first steps on the Moon