From mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi Sun Dec 20 16:14:01 2009 X-Session-Marker: 616E6F64796E654078706C6F726E65742E636F6D X-Filterd-Recvd-Size: 2890 From: "Roger Burrows" Organization: Anodyne Software To: mint@lists.fishpool.fi Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 16:10:12 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: [MiNT] Thing and MiNT Message-ID: <4B2E4C64.18692.477323@rfburrows.ymail.com> Priority: normal In-reply-to: <4B2E8AAA.6000008@online.no> References: <4B2E838B.7040304@online.no>, <0001ae58.017256d61d7c@smtp.freeola.net>, <4B2E8AAA.6000008@online.no> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (4.41) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi Errors-to: mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi X-original-sender: rfburrows@ymail.com Precedence: bulk List-help: List-unsubscribe: List-Id: X-List-ID: List-subscribe: List-owner: List-post: On 20 Dec 2009 at 21:35, Jo Even Skarstein wrote: > > Peter Slegg skreiv: > > > What you are saying is that an application that has worked > > fine for years with TOS and various versions of Mint is > > broken because some versions of XaAES or Mint break it. > > No. I'm saying that Thing 1.27 most likely has been broken all the time. > A change (don't know which) in XaAES has highlighted a bug in Thing. The > fact that is has been working previously doesn't mean that it has been > working correctly. > To add to this: It would be difficult (and almost certainly a waste of resources) to determine whether Thing 1.27 is in fact broken. But I think that most programmers have experienced the situation where a working program does not work with a new version of the operating system (or new hardware, or new something else) and have discovered that there was in fact a bug in the program which didn't show up before. It would be unreasonable in this situation to expect that the operating system maintainers would work around a bug in another program ... in many cases, it might in fact be impossible to do so. So when a new release of an operating system comes out, and a particular program no longer works properly (especially if it is only that program), it is quite likely due to a program bug. Ideally, you would contact the author, who would investigate, discover whether it's a program or operating system bug, and either fix it or inform the operating system maintainers who would then fix their problem. Unfortunately I don't think this is going to happen with Thing. So you are faced with a (hard) choice: . live with the bug (work around it) . don't use the new release of the operating system . stop using the program and find a replacement This is one argument for open-source software - or for at least the publishing of source code for no-longer-maintained programs (although sometimes that source code might be unmaintainable anyway, based on my experience...). Regards, Roger Burrows