Quote of the day

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Paul Rudin <paul.nospam at rudin.co.uk>:

> Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> writes:
>> The feeling of powerlessness can be crushing when you depend on a
>> third-party component that is broken with no fix in sight.
>
> Presumably it depends on whether you have the source for the third
> party component...

Just having such an experience. The linux kernel has a critical bug in a
major distribution (who shall be left unnamed here) that has been fixed
in a later kernel version.

Thanks to linux being free software, I managed to pin down the root
cause after more than a month of debugging. I sent a bug report to the
linux vendor and attached a tiny patch. The vendor has graciously agreed
to consider releasing an update in the summer (we are in the process of
verifying the fix).

The problem was first detected in December. A semi-reliable reproduction
was discovered in early February. The root cause and proposed fix was
identified mid-March. A vendor fix will likely come out by the end of
June.

That's a long time to be without a product to sell.


Marko