On Fri, 3 Oct 2025 09:02:01 -0700 Ron via linux <[email protected]> wrote:
> If I wrote and maintain $software, I don't want to field bug reports > from Hentai69Girls420LOL distro's users because that distro has done > something weird in their repos. Counterpoint: I did write and support commercial software for a couple of decades. We had two officially-supported distros with binaries (Debian and Red Hat), but because we also made source available, we said to customers: "If you can make it run on your $UNIX_LIKE system, we will support our software. But if the problem is due to your OS, you're on your own." We had a few customers running on Ubuntu, FreeBSD and even Solaris and it wasn't all that big a deal. Second counterpoint: Sometimes you can find bugs in your code that are exposed on different OSes or CPU architectures. For example, I had a very long-standing bug in my Remind software that was only exposed when it ran on Big-endian PowerPC. Thanks to Debian, it automatically gets built and tested on a bunch of architectures: https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=remind&suite=sid So I do see a fair bit of value in trying to make your software actually portable and supportable on a wide variety of distros. Regards, Dianne. To unsubscribe send a blank message to [email protected] To get help send a blank message to [email protected] To visit the archives: https://lists.linux-ottawa.org
