Re: Ruby EOL in Cygwin 3.4.9?

[gs-cygwin.com@gluelogic.com]

On Wed, Oct 11, 2023 at 11:15:40PM -0500, Eric D Hendrickson wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Thanks for your reply.  Again, to the point that this is an all volunteer
> effort.
> 
> And not taking away from any of what you said.
> 
> However, sorry I was not more clear.  The issue here is as follows.
> 
> Is Cygwin as a whole not more important than any one package?
> 
> Cygwin is distributing a suite of packages.  Are you really saying that if
> there were a 0day vulnerability discovered in an EOL package still being
> distributed by Cygwin, that this would do no damage to the reputation of
> Cygwin?
> 
> How does Cygwin being an all volunteer effort have any bearing on this
> question, other than the time and interest of the volunteers?
> 
> Perhaps the volunteer team should consider adopting a process of evaluating
> the support status of every package it redistributes, even at the expense
> of slowing down the rate of releases.  Or dropping packages when no one has
> the time or interest in creating a package from a supported version of the
> tool in question.
> 
> Again for the benefit of Cygwin as a whole - distributing EOL packages
> could put Cygwin as a whole at risk, which I'm sure you would agree is much
> worse than dropping a package from the suite.
> 
> This goes back to my other question -
> 
> Is there an Issues log or backlog a la GitHub where bugs / enhancement
> requests / feature suggestions like this can be logged for future
> consideration / evaluation, instead of one off discussions in this
> ephemeral medium of email?
> 
> thank you and Cheers to you as well,
> Eric
> 
> On Wed, Oct 11, 2023 at 10:59 PM <gs-cygwin.com@gluelogic.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Oct 11, 2023 at 09:55:04PM -0500, Eric D Hendrickson via Cygwin
> > wrote:
> > > Sorry for the unclarity - I meant this for the whole list - not just you.
> > >
> > > Thank you so much for taking the time to respond.  Like you said, this
> > > really is all volunteers.
> > >
> > > For the whole list:
> > >
> > > Totally taking into account the all volunteer nature of Cygwin, would it
> > > make sense to defer on further non-emergency releases of Cygwin until all
> > > packages that are EOL have been updated?  Since this is the case with
> > ruby,
> > > I am guessing it's likely the case with other packages in Cygwin too.
> > >
> > > Is there a Issues log of some sort (ala github) for Cygwin somewhere, so
> > > that I can document this in the backlog and come back later to
> > investigate
> > > this myself if I have time this winter?
> > >
> > >
> > > On Wed, Oct 11, 2023 at 8:11 PM Eliot Moss <moss@cs.umass.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > > On 10/11/2023 6:36 PM, Hendrickson, Eric D wrote:
> > > > > Hi Eliot,
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks for responding.  That makes total sense.
> > > > >
> > > > > Totally taking into account the all volunteer nature of Cygwin,
> > would it
> > > > make sense to defer on further non-emergency releases of Cygwin until
> > all
> > > > packages that are EOL have been updated?  Since this is the case with
> > ruby,
> > > > I am guessing it's likely the case with other packages in Cygwin too.
> > > > >
> > > > > Is there a backlog for Cygwin somewhere, so that I can investigate
> > this
> > > > myself if I have time this winter?
> > > > >
> > > > > Thank you and all the best,
> > > > > Eric
> > > > >
> > > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > > From: Eliot Moss <moss@cs.umass.edu>
> > > > > Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2023 5:03 PM
> > > > > To: Hendrickson, Eric D <edh@optum.com>; cygwin@cygwin.com
> > > > > Cc: Eric @ Gmail <ericdavidhendrickson@gmail.com>
> > > > > Subject: Re: Ruby EOL in Cygwin 3.4.9?
> > > > >
> > > > > On 10/11/2023 12:37 PM, Hendrickson, Eric D via Cygwin wrote:
> > > > >> Hello all,
> > > > >>
> > > > >> As a ~25 year user and sometime contributor to Cygwin, I support
> > Cygwin
> > > > here at my place of work.  Does anyone know why we are deploying Ruby
> > 2.6
> > > > which EOL about 18 months ago?
> > > > >>
> > > > >> https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/branches/
> > > > >>
> > > > >> I'm concerned about proliferation of EOL versions of Ruby in case
> > some
> > > > security risk / 0Day is identified.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Please advise.
> > > > >> Eric Hendrickson
> > > >
> > > > You should send such things to the list, not me.  I'm just
> > > > a user who has only made occasional small contributions ...
> > > >
> > > > Eliot
> > > >
> > > > > If nobody has responded I can give a generic response:
> > > > > "Because cygwin is all volunteer and someone has not volunteered, or
> > did
> > > > volunteer and is behind, or fell off the radar."
> > > > >
> > > > > Someone else will know how to look up if there is a currently
> > registered
> > > > volunteer for Ruby ...
> > > > >
> > > > > Eliot Moss
> > > > >
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> > > >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 11, 2023 at 09:55:04PM -0500, Eric D Hendrickson via Cygwin
> > wrote:
> > > For the whole list:
> > >
> > > Totally taking into account the all volunteer nature of Cygwin, would it
> > > make sense to defer on further non-emergency releases of Cygwin until all
> > > packages that are EOL have been updated?
> >
> > Absolutely not.  That makes *zero* sense for an all volunteer group.
> >
> > Not every single package is important to everyone.
> > (I am speaking personally, as maintainer of a single package on Cygwin.)
> >
> > You care about Ruby?  Good.
> > I do not use Ruby, so that is not important *to me*.
> >
> > If some specific packages are important to you, please consider finding
> > the maintainers of those packages and offering to help maintain those
> > packages.
> >
> > https://cygwin.com/cygwin-pkg-maint
> >
> > There are many ruby-* packages that have been orphaned.  Have at it. :)
> >
> > Cheers, Glenn

Your suggestions might be given slightly more weight if you made *any*
substantive contribution besides sharing your questionable assumptions,
and opinions on work that your think *other* people (who are volunteers)
should do.

Aside: The preference on this list is to bottom-post.