Hello,
there is only one product, constantly evolving. In that case MS still will be "evolving" windows 3.11 or DOS,
I thought it was clear -- you as a user could get Windows Vista (if you like MS example) or get Win 1.0 (or Win95 -- anything released) and apply _all_ updates to make this Vista (it could be possible that one of the latest updates would mean "download 80% of Vista" and it would be also possible that 90% of downloads are not necessary because the older one is replaced by newer).
That's not the natural way technology evolves, to improve certain areas ,
I differ in opinion.
major changes has to be done,
Do it then -- but not all changes at once.
old stuff simple becomes unmanteniable quickly and the manteniance costs go uphill in such a way that becomes impossible to manage.
There is no conflict here -- minimum upgrade 20070413 is required to run XYZ.
Im still wondering how you think such thing has to be implemented in the real world , where human and monetary resources are limited ,where you have to sell NEW things to pay the bills and fullfill constantly evolving requirements.
Money -- "releases", support, updates. Even if it would be technically possible to get updates from 10 years back to get latest state of the system I would doubt that anyone would like to do it -- instead of getting/buying fresh "release". And for quality product people tend to like to pay.
In short , your proposed scenario is not very realistic.
IMHO it is realistic and while I can't say it is better that current one (because it was not tried), but the current one is failing more and more -- you can still live with it and wait for "surprise" or you can anticipate that it does not have (technically speaking) chance to be successful _AND_ at the same time possible to maintain. Currently it is hardly maintained (supported I should rather say) just because, well, it is not successful. You cannot get both with today's model. have a nice day, bye -- Maciej Pilichowski --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org