No Stupid or OLD Devices Support

[nurmagoz]

There shouldnt be any old or nonsense software support in the system level (like IRC in the kernel?! or Floppy Disk Support…)

If necessary, such support may be possible within the App-per-VM (ApV) model, since it’s based on Linux and already includes support for these kinds of legacy features. However, this will never be a priority.

[Patrick]

This policy is rejected.

Same reasoning as here:

Support Only Worthy Architecture & CPU

Disagree. This policy is rejected. Various architectures have various support statuses and this will remain so. Contributors are welcome. I don’t think it’s productive to have detailed project strategy discussions. For comparison, I don’t think suggesting something similar to other projects would result in any policy changes either. It’s a do-ocracy. People who do work and are sufficiently compatible with the project make decisions. The only thing with at least a chance to change this wo…

[nurmagoz]

So some of the results are:

• Obsolete machines which no one can have at this time if it doesnt work with the OS for a user or couple of users you should fix the issue, because if you dont fix it then why you have the code for the machine to begin with? (no upstream even to help for this)
• If obsolete driver wants nonsense privileges to work and not fitting with the OS security measurements, will you lower the security bar to make it work? if not, why do you have the driver to begin with?
• Old means unfixed bugs or vulnerabilities or even to have both just not yet examined well until someone figure out a way to breach (or already there are 0-days stored or sold and not yet exposed).
• Including Old means the overall code will be bulkier/bigger which will give hardness to impossible for auditing/examining it.
• Old mean most likely written in insecure language or wont fit into new methods like reproducibility or bootstrappability thus reduce code quality and assurity.
• Adding complexity to the code because it needs to be always on backward support ability.

…whereas the future should be clean, secure, no nonsense code or adding it in the wrong/dangerous places…etc.

[Patrick]

@nurmagoz

Obsolete machines

Don’t worry about it. Decisions were made (such as 32-bit or 64-bit?) and will be made as required. See also:

maintainability

@nurmagoz

you should fix the issue

No, not necessarily. It’s based on the contributors will to support an issue or not.

@nurmagoz

If obsolete driver wants nonsense privileges to work

I don’t remember the project having this issue yet. We’ll pass that bridge when we get there.

@nurmagoz

will you lower the security bar to make it work?

Probably not. What does “probably” mean? It’s difficult because it’s based on theoretic issues, not any specifically practical issue. For general guidelines, see: Kicksecure Stable Version User Experience

@nurmagoz

• Old means unfixed bugs or vulnerabilities or even to have both just not yet examined well until someone figure out a way to breach (or already there are 0-days stored or sold and not yet exposed).
• Including Old means the overall code will be bulkier/bigger which will give hardness to impossible for auditing/examining it.
• Old mean most likely written in insecure language or wont fit into new methods like reproducibility or bootstrappability thus reduce code quality and assurity.
• Adding complexity to the code because it needs to be always on backward support ability.

Cannot answer that generally without specific issue at hand.