Re: Predicted lifespan of different PostgreSQL branches

In response to Ron Mayer <rm_pg(at)cheapcomplexdevices(dot)com>:
> Bill Moran wrote:
> > Does the PostgreSQL project have any similar policy about EoLs?
>
> Is it a question for community support, or for various
> commercial vendor's support policies?

I'm not worried about vendors. If we're relying on vendor support, I'll
get a signed contract from them.

[snip]

> If you're asking about community support I'd hope the
> answer is "so long as supporting them is a good use of
> the community's time when compared to other work". Since
> understanding failure modes over long periods of time is
> probably of great interest for database developers one
> could guess that this means old versions will be supported
> as long as they're pretty similar to the newest version.

Sure. But some of us (you know, me, for example) live in a hybrid world --
somewhere between open source and business. I can't say thinks like, "the
next version will be released when it's ready"

I have enough open source background to understand the whole "it will
be supported as long as people care to work on it" mentality. But
guidelines would be nice. As I pointed out, the FreeBSD project seems
to have a done a really great job laying out guidelines as to how and
when they'll support things (at least from my viewpoint). I guess
what I'm really doing is trying to convince the Postgres folks that
they should adopt that model. :D

--
Bill Moran
Collaborative Fusion Inc.