[Info-vax] decc$stat() variants on VMS.

[Craig A. Berry]

On 6/30/16 1:07 AM, David Froble wrote:
> Craig A. Berry wrote:

>> For the 7 flavors of stat(), try to reduce that to 2 or 3, then further
>> simplify in a subsequent release. Some things in the CRTL should be
>> fairly easy to jettison; I'm not sure why we need _DECC_V4_SOURCE now
>> when v4.x of the compiler hasn't been current for a couple of decades.
>>
>> It's far from easy to maintain a predictable sliding window of new
>> features and deprecations, but it's the right way to do it. It's what
>> the competition does.
>>
>
> I guess my question is, what would keep a customer that just absolutely
> cannot change from continuing to run an old version of the language /
> compiler?  If that are that limited, I'd guess there is no development,
> and no changes anyway.

People can and do run old versions of things, but if it's a library like
the CRTL, you really don't want to be running a version that isn't
getting patches anymore. Most security breaches use exploits that have
been patched a year or more in the past. That means lots of people don't
apply patches in a timely fashion. Running versions of things that
aren't getting patches at all anymore is just irresponsible.