Feature proposal: Extended Life Cycle Support

[David Woodhouse]

On Sun, 2009-07-05 at 17:52 +0200, Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
> 
> 
> As described on the Feature page, but if there's any specific
> questions
> about the reasoning on there I'll be happy to answer those questions.

I had read the feature page, in which you claim that a three-year cycle
"disqualifies the distribution(s) as desktop Linux distributions".

I didn't see any justification for that assertion, especially given that
you're simultaneously claiming that a 13-month lifetime isn't long
_enough_ for you.

You've conveniently dodged the question of what lifetime you _do_ want
to provide, by saying 'yet to be determined'. But you must have _some_
idea, if you're so sure that 13 months is too short and 36 months is too
long.

So if three years is too long and one year is too short, what _do_ you
want? 2 years? 18 months?

18 months would be a single extra Fedora release, and that _might_ be
something we could make some progress on.

How much work would it take, to make it possible for us to still ship
updates for a release which has officially reached EOL? Does the sky
fall on our heads if we don't push the 'Kill F-9' button in koji and
bodhi precisely 1 month after the F-11 release? 

As a first step, perhaps we try that -- still officially state that the
release is EOL and should not be used, but _allow_ interested people
like Jeroen (and the original package owners, _if_ they are so inclined)
to continue to build and push updates, instead of forcibly cutting off
builds and updates as we do at the moment.

That _isn't_ something we would publish as a 'feature' though -- it
would strictly _unofficial_, although you'd be permitted to use the
Fedora infrastructure for it.

If it turns out that there _is_ enough interest and the interested
people are _actually_ keeping on top of security fixes etc., then maybe
we could consider officially admitting that it happens, and _then_
publishing it as a 'feature'. And/or extending it to more than one extra
release. But those are all questions for the future.

If it doesn't take too much infrastructure work, I see no reason why we
shouldn't let them _try_. It doesn't hurt Fedora at all, does it?

-- 
David Woodhouse                            Open Source Technology Centre
David.Woodhouse at intel.com                              Intel Corporation