Oldest bug ever
I've had my share of old bugs, but #234448 holds the distinct record of being the oldest bug that I ever found a fix for. It's so old, I don't even know how old exactly.
Don't be betrayed by the number 234448. While the Debian bug was
filed in 2004, the bug itself is older than that. Take a look at this
FreeBSD commit, for example; the original import of the 4.4BSDLite
code of the 'trek' program already has the bug. And that was over 14
years ago. The first
NetBSD commit is even older: 15 years, 7 months ago
.
BSD itself, of course, is much older than that, and so is trek. The copyright header contains 'Copyright(c) 1980, 1993', which suggests that this bug might be as much as 28 years old. That's almost as old as I am...
Like I said, a record.
A few months ago Slashdot had a story about a 33 years old bug being fixed: http://bsd.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/08/2236232
This bug was traced back to Sixth Edition UNIX, released in 1975(!).
Earlier this year there was another report about a 25 years old bug: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/11/1339228&from=rss
Anyway, yours has been alive long enough. It was about time that it got squashed. Thanks!
Eh, it is a record. I clearly stated that it was the oldest bug I ever found a fix for. I'm well aware of some of the BSD bugs you point to; also, I often talk to philip, who once told me about a bug he'd fixed that he knew to be much older than 15 years.
But of bugs I found a fix for, this is a record.
I clearly stated that it was the oldest bug I ever found a fix for.
You're right, of course. I read it too fast... Congratulations again