[erlang-questions] : Was Re: Bug ?! now Erlang comment (LONGLONG)

[Ulf Wiger (TN/EAB)]

Raimo Niskanen wrote:
> 
> If there is _ANY_ suspicion a new release would cause _ANY_ 
> upgrade problems the customers paying most of our salaries 
> will _NOT_ take the new release and we will be stuck 
> maintaining the old release forever, adding new features from 
> new releases when they desire; essentially forking Erlang/OTP 
> into two.
> 
> And that is something we do not need.


This commercial user still recalls an OTP release back in the
early days that took us three months to integrate into our
system. Not all of that was OTP's fault, but there were lots 
of incompatibilities, several of which were not even documented,
and a recompile was mandatory.

This was long ago, and OTP took the opportunity to improve 
tremendously already in the next release. Nowadays, we 
don't even debate whether we should incorporate new OTP
releases as they come out. It's a given, and we've gotten
used to such outstanding quality that new OTP releases is 
regarded as an opportunity rather than as a potential 
source of problems - even by our project managers.

Reminiscing about the good old days is fine, but I'd 
rather not relive them.  (:

BR,
Ulf W