netcat -q default behavior, should it be reverted?

[Etienne Goyer]

Hi everyone,

I am sending this email following an IRC discussion with Robbie.  This
discussion might belong to ubuntu-devel, but let's start here.  Not
being a developer myself, my post to ubuntu-devel are moderated, which
would complicate kickstarting this discussion.

It's about bug #544935:

    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/netcat-openbsd/+bug/544935


Long story short, a Ubuntu-specific patch change the default behavior of
netcat, and that break some people's use-case.  For example, a script
that would rely on the default nc behavior would break on Ubuntu >=
hardy.  This could happen if someone was upgrading from, say, dapper, or
was trying to port his script from a different distribution.

Robbie is of the opinion that the behavior should be reverted back to
the upstream default in Natty, but left as is in current release.  Me, I
do not know.  On one hand, this would against the SRU policy, with sound
rationale.  On the other, this "bug" can be extremely frustrating to
those that hit it.  I think, at the very least, this would need to be
documented *somehow*.

Thoughts?


-- 
Etienne Goyer
Technical Account Manager - Canonical Ltd
Ubuntu Certified Instructor   -    LPIC-3

 ~= Ubuntu: Linux for Human Beings =~