Re: State of support for back PG branches

On Mon, Sep 26, 2005 at 08:54:49PM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Tom,
>
> >Or, as you say, we could take the viewpoint that there are commercial
> >companies willing to take on the burden of supporting back releases, and
> >the development community ought not spend its limited resources on doing
> >that. I'm hesitant to push that idea very hard myself, because it would
> >look too much like I'm pushing the interests of my employer Red Hat
> >... but certainly there's a reasonable case to be made there.
>
> Well, I think you know my opinion on this. Since there *are* commercial
> companies available, I think we should use them to reduce back-patching
> effort. I suggest that our policy should be: the community will patch
> two old releases, and beyond that if it's convenient, but no promises.
> In other words, when 8.1 comes out we'd be telling 7.3 users "We'll be
> patching this only where we can apply 7.4 patches. Otherwise, better
> get a support contract."

I agree, although I think there should be some time guarantees as well.
I like the ~3 year number that's been tossed around.

> Of course, a lot of this is up to individual initiative; if someone
> fixes a patch so it applies back to 7.2, there's no reason not to make
> it available. However, there's no reason *you* should make it a priority.

Yeah, I hope that commercial interests can work together on supporting
things they want supported.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461