Conill: The long-term consequences of maintainers’ actions

Understanding the implications of reality, and of a software life cycle, is a management responsibility though.

Begging the whiners, of course, if a developer in abused for pointing out this week's problem then it's time for them to find a new manager.

There are reasons to take on responsibility for all dependencies (safety critical systems), but they are few and far between. Software is dependent on its build tools, dependent on its platform, each on another platform, OS, hardware. It is expedient to use those systems that exist; management must understand that.

Developers should be honest up front about the expected or contracted lifecycle, and management must accept that risk.

"It's time to do the upgrade" should be met with healthy doubt, but not abuse. And once stated, its managements problem to schedule time.