Not if you're not affected by the bugs. Software *always* has bugs. And new code in your environment is *untested* code in your environment. If I am not affected by bugs, if I'm under a support contract to correct any bugs that I *am* affected by (as was the case in Josh's original argument with RHEL), and no new features are required, then all upgrading will do is take me from a state of known bugs that don't affect my systems to unknown bugs or undocumented/unintended changes that *might* affect my systems. The PostgreSQL community supports latest release. Here, "upgrade to most recent" exactly means "upgrade to the version we know has all the fixes we've already done". We ask people to upgrade here so we don't have to reinvent the wheel just because someone wants to use 7.4.1. Resources are tight enough just supporting the most recent codebase. Including every codebase back to the beginning of time would require an enormous number of people. Support contracts with, for example, RHEL, don't necessarily work that way. They typically say "use our most recent packages; anything else is not covered and you're on your own". Because support contracts say this, they have to maintain the codebase themselves to a fair extent. Granted, they can just take the changes from -- in this case -- PostgreSQL's source code, but they are the people responsible for the security of the code base and compatibility of the code base. That's *exactly* what you buy when you buy the support contract. Look at it this way: The benefits to any upgrade are "bug fix" and "new feature". The caveats to any upgrade are "new bug" and "feature change". (PHP and MySQL are notorious for the latter.) If "bug fix" is 100% handled by support contract, and "new feature" is 100% not useful, what is my impetus? For a direct example, why should a business upgrade their desktops from Windows XP to Windows Vista before 2011 if *none* of the new features are needed? -- Brandon Aiken CS/IT Systems Engineer -----Original Message----- From: pgsql-general-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pgsql-general-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tom Lane Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 9:29 AM To: Naz Gassiep Cc: Joshua D. Drake; Erik Jones; CAJ CAJ; pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Lifecycle of PostgreSQL releases Naz Gassiep <naz@xxxxxxxx> writes: > Joshua D. Drake wrote: >> Example discussion with customer: > ... > Finally, in the absence of security concerns or performance issues (and > I mean the "we can't afford to buy better hardware" type edge of the > envelope type issues) there is zero *need* to upgrade. This line of argument ignores the fact that newer versions often contain fixes for data-loss-grade bugs. Now admittedly that is usually an argument for updating to x.y.z+1 rather than x.y+1, but I think it destroys any reasoning on the basis of "if it ain't broke". regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly ** LEGAL DISCLAIMER ** Statements made in this e-mail may or may not reflect the views and opinions of Wineman Technology, Inc. or its employees. This e-mail message and any attachments may contain legally privileged, confidential or proprietary information. If you are not the intended recipient(s), or the employee or agent responsible for delivery of this message to the intended recipient(s), you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify the sender and delete this e-mail message from your computer.
