Re: viper-mode C-[ behavior change in Emacs 24.4

[John Mastro]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> wrote:
> So then the question is: if not for stable software,
> why would anyone want software that can be up to two
> years old, just so that the distro itself is stable?

To minimize the amount of not-strictly-necessary change occurring
beneath their feet. Even if the absolute level of "stability" never
changes, some users don't want to give up the devil they know for the
devil they don't.

Consider backwards incompatibilities in e.g. libraries, which may or
may not count as instability depending on how you look at it but can
certainly force cascading changes even in the absence of defects.

Obviously distributions do sometimes skip or modify problematic
application versions, but my impression is that Stefan is right: what
gets packaged has more to do with their release cycle than a qualitative
judgment about what's "stable" and what isn't.

--
john