Re: [HACKERS] RE: cvs-commit-digest V1 #856

On Tue, 1 Feb 2000, Don Baccus wrote:

> At 10:52 PM 2/1/00 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> 
> >Peter, you need to have a little more respect for stability of
> >library APIs.  Gratuitous breaking of backwards compatibility
> >is not the done thing around here.  It's especially not done
> >without any discussion.
> 
> I thought we went over this a week ago...was I dreaming?
> 
> PG is intended to be a PROFESSIONAL product.  You don't arbitrarily
> break things for the hell of it. 
> 
> PG has CUSTOMERS.  Not in the formal "we bought it" sense, but in
> the moral and professional engineering sense.
> 
> You don't screw your customers without good reason, and when you
> do you at least provide them cushions and soft mattresses and
> advance notice.  Especially advance notice.  And if you do screw
> them, you do so after you explore alternatives and come to realize
> that there is no other course open to you.  And you offer them
> a condom (i.e. an upgrade path).
> 
> Because they depend on you.
> 
> Is professionalism so hard to understand?

Don ... I try to stay out of stuff like this but ... TONE IT DOWN!

Peter is making mistakes, granted, but he is making them in a *NONE
PRODUCTION RELEASE* code tree ... if he messes with a -STABLE release in
this way, fine, your responses are justified, but, right now, I don't
think they are ...

Marc G. Fournier                   ICQ#7615664               IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org 
primary: scrappy@hub.org           secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org