Re: EOL for 7.4?

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 9:40 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> daveg wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 02:22:01AM +0000, Greg Stark wrote:
>> >
>> > Really I think you guys are on the wrong track trying to map Postgres
>> > releases to commercial support terms. None of the Postgres releases
>> > are "supported" in the sense that there's no warranty and no promises,
>> > it's all best effort. If you want a promise of anything then pay
>> > someone for that service.
>> >
>> > As with any open source software if you're running 7-year-old versions
>> > of the software you can't seriously expect the developers to take any
>> > interest in bugs you discover which don't affect current releases.
>> > Other projects don't release back branches at all. The most the
>> > developers are likely to do if your bugs require serious engineering
>> > is declare that the version you're using is too old.
>>
>> Claiming to support versions that are "too old" is giving users a false
>> sense of comfort. Encouraging users to use these versions is actually
>> harming them as when this happens they will be stuck with either living
>> with the bug or doing an immediate unplanned upgrade.
>>
>> I suggest we announce now that both 7.4 and 8.0 will EOL when 8.5 is expected
>> to ship, or to comfort those who never use .0 versions when 8.5.1 ships.
>
> I question whether it makes sense to EOL a version just to encourage
> people to upgrade --- that logic really seems beyond our scope.  It
> might be practical to do it, but I see it taking us in a direction that
> we might want to avoid.

I don't agree with "because we want to force people to upgrade", but I
do agree with Dave Gould's point about giving a false sense of comfort
(I made this same point upthread somewhere, I think).

...Robert