The lesson I pull from this is "This... right here, Mr CIO, is why we use OS/distros that are 5+ years past release in our production environment".

In the enterprise world, there is a balance between "how valuable is the newest/latest release to our business really" and "how much risk does the newest/latest release pose in terms of security and stability?". And that balance is usually skewed quite a ways away from anything near "bleeding edge", or anything that was once "bleeding edge", or well, anything that hasn't been searched, scanned, checked, verified, and tested by a zillion people, and now is sitting gently on nice green pasture chewing on grass contentedly, doing exactly that which it is supposed to do, and nothing else.

I've worked in the IT industry since before the term "IT" existed. There is one thing I have learned (ok.many things, but this is a biggie): All software has bugs when released. All major releases (and some minor releases) will include exploits and vulnerabilities. All OS updates, especially major ones, will also have exploits and vulnerabilities. Oh... And most of those exploits and vulnerabilities? They will be the same ones that have been released (with only slight variations), like clockwork, in every OS update/release since the dawn of time. Literallly. Every. Single. Time.

Also learned? The standard time frame from initiial release to realizing that "Oh crap! Our new release has a major exploit that we should have known was there because it's basically the same one that is released every other time a major relase is made, but we're all new and thought we knew better than the last 100 teams who did this", is about 3 years. That's the life cycle between "we just released this totally new thing, that's totally cool, and we're all super stoked to have folks use it, cause it's like way better than the old version that did the exact same thing, but had all the bugs removed over time" and "Ok, we actually think we got all the bugs and exploits cleaned out, so we're passing the torch to the new team, who we are told is planning to push out their new release of the same software again soon. Don't worry. I'm sure they'll do fine. The've got some really cool ideas and have completely re-written the entre section of code that we just finally finished fixing. I'm sure it'll be perfect!".

That's not to say don't use bleeding edge distros and sofware. Absolutely do. Use it on that web server you don't care about and use to distribute cat videos. Use it a lot. Invite people to use it too. It's brand new, so make sure to really put that thing through its paces, right? Oh... And make sure to log into tech forums and really encourage young admins working on college campuses, and building their home systems, to use these things and all their super neato new features (that suspiciously do exactly what the old code did, but... you know... newer). And hey. When you call them "chum" on said online forums, they'll certainly think you are just being friendly, but have an old school way of speaking...


Yes. I am evil. But it's a dog eat dog world out there, and someone's got to wear the milkbone underoos.