Panther tickets

[Jordan K. Hubbard]

On May 20, 2009, at 7:22 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> This is the second time you've closed this ticket for the sole  
> reason that the problem occurs only on Panther. I previously  
> reopened this ticket explaining that's not a good reason for  
> closing. You've closed other tickets for the same reason. Up to now,  
> we have not had a policy of closing tickets for the sole reason that  
> they are Panther-specific. While we do not officially support  
> Panther, the policy thus far has been that we would still accept  
> patches to fix things for Panther. I find it useful to have bug  
> reports filed for issues, even if a fix is not immediately known,  
> that way interested parties can see the report and Cc themselves and  
> offer input. The number of open tickets in the database has no  
> bearing on this. If you would like MacPorts to adopt a policy of  
> declining to fix Panther issues and immediately closing Panther  
> tickets, let's discuss that proposal here.

OK, so, let's discuss it.  I'll start:  I think continuing to support  
Panther, even by inference or continued acceptance of patches to  
support it, is a really bad idea and here are some (though by no means  
all) of the reasons why it's a bad idea:

1. Every #ifdef or Panther-only work around adds to the overall  
support burden of MacPorts.  Some day, assuming MacPorts lives long  
enough to have such problems, most of the current set of people will  
be retired / MIA / dead and it will fall to a new crop of engineers to  
support the aging ball of goop collectively known as MacPorts.  For  
each and every line of legacy support code, the justification(s) for  
which will have long since vanished into the fog of history, the  
burdens on these people will only be increased.  Think of your  
successors ("think of the children!") even if it's a burden you,  
personally are willing to shoulder today.

2. The marketing figures are not generally available, nor can I make  
such figures generally available, so you're just going to have to take  
my word for it that the overall percentage of Apple customers still  
running Panther is small.  It might be a user base which is  
occasionally loud, in certain specific cases, but that still does not  
make it large or even noteworthy.  "The needs of the many outweigh the  
needs of the few", to quote Spock (and what argument isn't instantly  
won by quoting Spock, I ask you? :-).  If you're not someone who goes  
in for Spock, then simply substitute the law of diminishing returns.

3. At the risk of stating the obvious, you are an open source project  
that provides its labor for free.  Given that fact, there will also  
always be users / companies / evil foreign governments who are more  
than willing to ask for, nay demand, the moon and the stars because  
there are these silly people giving celestial objects away for free,  
or so they heard anyway, and WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR US LATELY?  In  
such an environment, it has also been shown that the decibel level of  
ambient whining can be significantly decreased once the project  
demonstrates some ability to set and enforce the boundaries of "just  
what we're willing to do", drawing various lines in the sand when  
appropriate.  An n-release support policy, where n is some mutually  
agreeable constant (my favorite is "2"), is also one such useful line  
in the sand to draw.

- Jordan