Re: Display problems with `before-string' in overlay

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 09:59:10 -0400
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden
> 
> It seems that you and I define "serious" in a different way.  My
> criterion says that a bug where an important feature does something
> that is indisputably wrong and that causes real trouble is a serious
> bug.

While such bugs create a well-understood motivation for fixing them,
we should always weigh that against the possibility of introducing new
and exciting bugs into an already very stable code base, and delaying
an already long overdue release.  When such a risk is real (as in this
case, since we are talking about a change in the guts of a general
purpose display code), we should, as a counter-balance, estimate the
risk of someone tripping on the original bug.  If that latter risk is
low (as it is in this case, as evidenced by the 2-year period passed
since the commit of the buggy code), we should seriously consider
leaving the bug alone until after the release.

Frankly, I'm astonished that I need to explain such truisms that are
well known to anyone who has ever managed a software release, present
company included.