[Interest] the path forward - that 7 year thing - was willy-nilly

[Roland Hughes]

Breaking this off into its own topic. Roping in some of Andre' and Scott 
Bloom too.

On Wednesday, 24 March 2021 09:58:50 PDT André Pönitz wrote:

>> The exact opposite is the correct thing:
>>   - deprecation messages while compiling the source code are correct
>>   - messages to the mailing list are not sufficient
> Sorry, this assumes that "user" people constantly compile their application
> against Qt dev branch to notice. That is obviously not the case. And once it
> is already merged or even released it's practically to late.

On 3/25/21 6:00 AM, interest-request at qt-project.org wrote:
> On Wednesday, 24 March 2021 04:48:08 PDT Roland Hughes wrote:
>> On 3/24/21 6:00 AM,interest-request at qt-project.org  wrote:
>>> The exact opposite is the correct thing:
>>>    - deprecation messages while compiling the source code are correct
>>>    - messages to the mailing list are not sufficient
>> No, it's not. It only seems correct if you live in a world where nothing
>> lasts six months.
>>
>> Out in the real product world you create some product using Qt 3.x or
>> 4.2. That product goes to production where it remains for 7-15+ years.
> I stand by what I said and I live in the real world. You clearly live in a
> different, also real world. I don't doubt any of the claims you make are true.
> I do doubt that they are the majority or even significant. The majority of the
> uses I am familiar with last much shorter than 7 years. At the very least,
> there are opportunities in those 7 years to do incremental progress or keep up
> with the latest.

According to the FDA fact sheet.

https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/fact-sheet-fda-glance

There are currently 25,864 registered FDA medical device facilities. Not 
one of them can change a single approved process without going through 
the FDA approval process for said change. That is __NOT__ a sprint nor 
is it cheap. Within the past 18 months a drug manufacturer in high 
priced California put out a cattle call for a PDP 11/44 (might have been 
24) system manager. Those machines were last made around 1978. There is 
a group of them still making necessary drugs in California.

Once something is in place it stays there because it is incredibly 
expensive to replace.

>
> Qt's horizon is about 7 years.
That's 8 years too short.
> Anything coded to Qt 3.x needs to ported first to 4.8, before going to 5.0.
> Once you're in the 5.x series, port to 5.15 and fix the warnings. Once you're
> clean in a working build, port to Qt 6.

There is no one who went to a good school for their IT degree where they 
made the person take Cost Accounting ever going to utter that as a valid 
path forward.

There is no MBA, even from a shit school like Keller, that is going to 
sign off on such a project.

> You've got all warnings you needed to make progress in each of those steps.
>
> You may not like some of those changes. Then I suggest that you should have
> complained when Qt 5.15 became available with those warnings. And do note
> about half of the warnings were introduced before 5.15, so where were those
> people when those releases were made and the warnings added?

Watching production systems continue to run and generate revenue or save 
lives, sometimes both. Until management makes a decision to update, 
there is nothing for them to do. That PDP 11 story I told you earlier, 
it's not a one-off. They aren't the only ones maintaining FDA approved 
manufacturing lines established in the late 1960s to mid 1970s. 
Confidentiality agreements will force people to clam up, but just about 
every pain reliever and antibiotic ointment you take for granted being 
on a store shelf from aspirin to cold formula has such a line. If it has 
been on the market 30+ years, unless the production was sent off-shore, 
the same line will be making it.

Until management makes a decision to update/replace something, there is 
nothing for them to do.

>> Now the product needs to be redeveloped/enhanced because the benefits
>> now outweigh the costs of spin-up.
> That's why you need to do it incrementally and you shouldn't wait to do it.
> Keep up to date in those 15 years, even if you don't actually release a new
> product with those updated versions.

That is spoken like someone who has always worked in the 
x86-wanna-be-a-real-computer-when-I-grow-up hacking on the fly world. In 
the regulated world, whether you ship a product or not doesn't matter. 
The development process requires you create The Four Holy Documents up 
front.. You have a full QA team with a formal and documented as executed 
testing plan. Full formal code review with secretary and official form 
filing. A full formal test by an authorized third party of the device 
off the actual and formally certified production line. It can't be a 
one-off or a "pilot" line. It has to be *the* line that will produce 
units for sale.

Every iteration whether you ship it or not.

Why?

Turn on an old episode of NCIS and watch when Abby hands Gibbs or one of 
the other members an evidence bag. They've got to sign and date it to 
maintain the chain of custody. Basically the same thing. **If** you want 
to release a second generation of a product with updated software via 
the enhancement path it has to be a *direct* improvement on a previously 
FDA certified device. You can't go "iterative" unless every iteration 
goes to full production even if you never sell one. That is *not* cheap. 
At that point it is ludicrous to not ship it and that is part of the 
reason behind the onerous process.

>> The very first time you find out everything that got nuked is today.
> Like I said, I can't help if feedback wasn't given at the time that there was
> time to accept such feedback. You may say that going away for 15 years and
> then complaining is acceptable in some industries. It clearly isn't in this.
It clearly *is* the case and the reason companies are abandoning Qt 
wholesale.
>
> You may not like that statement. It's true nonetheless.
>
>> Given the current state of Qt and the willy-nilly nuking of things, both
>> of these companies are going to have to go with CopperSpice or some
>> other competitor. Qt 6 isn't usable and Qt 5 has no LTS unless they want
>> to support the ex-wife in a manner she would like to become accustomed to.
> We are not nuking things willy-nilly. You may not like what we removed, you
> may not like the process, but it was documented, over a period of time, all
> the removals were for a reason.
>
> So stop the FUD.

It's not FUD as others have pointed out. You didn't even know the stuff 
Andre' needed was shot out of the saddle so quit claiming FUD. The 
process is far more Willy-Nilly than measured. The decisions aren't 
based on polling the customers and stuff is shot out of the saddle 
without any viable replacement.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/willy-nilly

1*: *by compulsion *: *without choice

2 *: *in a haphazard or spontaneous manner

Andre' and much of the customer base was impacted by compulsion without 
choice because the customer base was not polled.

>Wikipedia says RHEL 6 ELS will be supported through 2024. Red Hat must be 
making a good chunk of money from customers like yours to still support kernel
2.6.32.

This is another huge section of the market you don't take into account when deprecating.

DOD and NSA supplier contracts as well as alphabet soup itself.

That's where 2024 came from. It's a massive installed base. You __really__ need to talk to the boys & girls in charge of RHEL and find out the next really long support life version and when that support life ends before nuking support for that version.

That would be why, according to what I hear, so many defense contractors dropped Qt. People can't even mention it as a possible tool anymore I hear. Same as for the medical device world.

The reason most of the users don't care about the security of the OS is because the systems either aren't connected to squat or they are using military only communications methods.

What about your customers Scott? Without violating any non-disclosures, are your customers all air-gapped?

The embedded systems world ***has*** to have a long life stability path. Right now you are chasing the phone market where six months is ancient history. *That* is why companies with deep pockets are abandoning Qt wholesale.

-- 
Roland Hughes, President
Logikal Solutions
(630)-205-1593

http://www.theminimumyouneedtoknow.com
http://www.infiniteexposure.net
http://www.johnsmith-book.com
http://www.logikalblog.com
http://www.interestingauthors.com/blog

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/interest/attachments/20210325/377c65ac/attachment-0001.html>