Re: Predicted lifespan of different PostgreSQL

Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
>
> Devrim GUNDUZ wrote:
> -- Start of PGP signed section.
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Sat, 2007-01-27 at 08:41 +0000, Dave Page wrote:
> > >
> > > What do people think about that? Does anyone think it would be an
> > > unreasonable policy?
> >
> > I don't think so. You should build 8.0 binaries until the community
> > stops maintaining PostgreSQL 8.0.
> >
> > This is what we do for RPMs -- I know it is really a lot of work to
> > maintain older releases but as a community packager, it is not my "job"
> > to force people to upgrade to new version by not supplying older
> > binaries.
>
> Agreed, and I do believe we should be supporting releases as far back as
> reasonably possible.

The problem I see is that different people have differing opinions on what
is "reasonable".

It might be educational for those not familiar to search back through the
archives for the complaints that cropped up in Nov and Dec regarding the
upcoming EoL of FreeBSD 4.x.

Not sure if the official announcement (that was made several years ago)
made that situation better or worse, but it goes to show that some people
expect stuff to be supported forever. My concern is that without an
official policy, the key developers of the Postgres team will get bogged
down trying to maintain stuff long after it's technically practical, because
some users find it "reasonable."

Of course, the end of "official" support for a project doesn't prevent folks
with an interest from continuing to support it unofficially. The CVS
tree will still be there, etc.

Anyway, just my thoughts on the matter. It's interesting to see the other
discussion that's going on.

-Bill