Plans for EL4 End of Life

[Karel Volný]

Dne St 4. ledna 2012 08:09:31, Michael Stahnke napsal(a):
> > planning is a nice thing, but ... what if you are stuck
> > with some hardware that works with the old software only,
> > for example?
> Well the hardware that won't run something newer is probably
> approaching 10 years old at this point.  It's probably time
> for an upgrade, or virtualization.

LOL, I got a bit amused trying to imagine how are you 
virtualizing a large scale CNC machine ... :-)

well, I have no clue what are the real usages of RHEL4+EPEL

but I just don't like the attitude

it has bitten me just a few weeks ago - why should I buy a new 
printer when the twelve years old one is in perfect shape, it 
provides a good quality, and the price per page ratio is the 
lowest in its class?

I'd rather pay the price of the new printer to someone to fix the 
driver to work with new kernel than to throw away the old one, 
trashing the Earth with another piece of waste

> > > > And when I worked in big enterprise, I needed all
> > > > the help I could get to be able to move systems. 
> > > > :)
> > 
> > was it big enough to create its own software support team
> > (I do not mean helpdesk but real developers) because it
> > was way cheaper than to adapt to vendor's lifecycles?
> 
> Yes it was large enough, but that wasn't a good option.  Moving
> on a planned schedule, though difficult is often the cheapest
> and best solution.

now you say "is often" - and what about the rest of cases (e.g. 
my experience is different, or the managers in my previous 
company just couldn't do the math ...)?

will supporting them negatively affect the majority? - I don't 
think so

will supporting them cost us more than it would cost them if we 
dropped the support? - don't know ... but as we are talking about 
moving things to archive, i.e. eating the same disk space, just 
under another directory, I doubt our costs would be significant 
in comparison

...
> > and if we do not drop EPEL4, what forces you to support the
> > module?
> 
> When you put something into EPEL, you are more-or-less agreeing
> to attempt to support it throughout the life of the operating
> systems EPEL is tracking.  If we stop tracking EPEL4, people
> who have been trying to keep compatibility with E4, and back
> port fixes, etc will get a significant amount of time (in some
> cases) back.

this does not answer my question

okay, you "agreed to attempt" - now what?

> > - I thought we are talking about volunteer project ...
> > 
> It is.  It's also primarily in use by business customers this
> is why planning and communication is key.

so, wouldn't it be better to communicate with these customers and 
present some resume rather then push everyone's selfish agenda on 
this list?

K.

-- 
Karel Volný
QE BaseOs/Daemons Team
Red Hat Czech, Brno
tel. +420 532294274
(RH: +420 532294111 ext. 8262074)
xmpp kavol at jabber.cz
:: "Never attribute to malice what can
::  easily be explained by stupidity."
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