[Proj] Re: Polar stereographic, different values on different platforms?

[strebe]

On Aug 21, 2008, at 7:24:27 PM, "Frank Warmerdam" 
<warmerdam at pobox.com> wrote:
Bruce Raup wrote:
> I agree with this general philosophy. I can't imagine a bug being
> squashed within 24 hours in a typical proprietary package.

...
For whatever reason, the concept of providing fixed
binaries does not seem very common with larger proprietary software
packages these days (or perhaps I just don't see it). Nevertheless,
I think speed of bug fixing is a strength of open source, especially
for a savvy user willing to rebuild from "trunk".

It is a problem of responsibility. Many bug fixes introduce new bugs, 
occasionally far, far from the location of the fix. A propriety vendor 
feels responsible for the consequences of a bug fix and often ends up 
exhaustively testing the entire binary for any bug fix(es) that go 
into a build. Hence it is most common for a propriety vendor to roll 
up several bug fixes into one release so that the exhaustive testing 
can be amortized over many bugs. Of course, it takes time to 
accumulate many bug fixes. Hence it takes time for new releases.

Regards,
-- daan Strebe

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