Do you really want developers to be on this list was (Re: Very bad status of hardware (especially wifi) support in ubuntu, due to the too many accumulated regressions)

[Andrew Sayers]

Stephan Hermann wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 2008-11-13 at 11:56 +0100, Markus Hitter wrote:
>>
>>   - Allow downgrades. This should help narrowing potential causes of  
>> the trouble.
> 
> This is something I don't understand.
> When I upgrade to a new release, I always think (or is it knowing): "Ok,
> for the next 4 hours I'll sit in front of this computer, and I expect
> something to break...because it's software made by people". If nothing
> breaks, then I'm really surprised and happy. But when something breaks,
> I already expected that. And when I find the cause for the breakage,
> I'll try to fix it, AND/OR file a bug report about that issue. 

That's commendable practice, but the problem in Vincenzo's case was a
hardware regression that would require upstream developer time in order
to write a fix.  An easy downgrade path would give users in that
situation the opportunity to use a system that works while they're
waiting.  It also gives a communication channel to users that aren't
technical enough to describe hardware problems - if we log hardware
profiles when users up/downgrade, we can see which profiles correlate
most strongly with downgrades, and use that to help guess which bug
reports are one guy with a dodgy graphics card, and which are something
more general.

	- Andrew