On Jun 25, 2010, at 17:48 , Troy Dawson wrote:

> Simon Butcher wrote:
>> Thanks Troy and Connie for the heads-up, and all the testing.
>> Is this a new policy by T.U.V. to perform major version upgrades to fix a major security problem instead of backporting security fixes into the old version? It only seems to be recent behaviour (openoffice, firefox).
>> simon
> 
> This is a good question, and it depends on what you mean by "new" policy.  This is a policy that they started a couple of years ago (2 or 3 years), but it isn't for all packages, only for a small set.

But the policy is (or was) to provide such possibly not quite backward compatible enhancements with minor releases only. Which in particular means, after a beta phase. Not with a critical security update that ought to be rolled out a.s.a.p.

IMO this firefox update is either a breach of policy, or indeed establishing a new one. It will hit our users' systems monday morning. I'm very curious what will happen then.

- Stephan

> When they originally said it, they listed firefox, openoffice, and I *believe* evolution.  They said they were going to update them to the latest release about once a year.  It turns out that it's actually taking them two years.
> 
> Here is how often they have done major updates for each of these
> 
> SL4
> Firefox 1.0 -> 1.5 : Aug. 2006
> Firefox 1.5 -> 3.0 : Sep. 2008
> Firefox 3.0 -> 3.6 : Jun. 2010
> 
> SL5
> Firefox 1.5 -> 3.0 : Jul. 2008
> Firefox 3.0 -> 3.6 : Jun. 2010
> openoffice 2.0 -> 2.3 : Jun. 2008
> openoffice 2.3 -> 3.1 : Jun. 2010

-- 
Stephan Wiesand
DESY -DV-
Platanenenallee 6
15738 Zeuthen, Germany