A request for RedHat 8.0 continued support...

[Pekka Savola]

On Sat, 8 Nov 2003, Eric Rostetter wrote:
> For 7.2, the reason most stated is that AS 2.1 is 7.2 based, so the AS 2.1
> patches should work easily on 7.2, in fact more easily than 7.3.

But those AS patches won't work for 7.3, so extra effort is needed, 
because 7.3 must be done anyway..?
 
> For 8.0, the argument is standard business practices. (Which would mean
> not supporting 7.2, BTW).  Standard practice is to support the last "dot
> release" of the last X releases.  So if X was 3, that would be RH 9, 8.0,
> and 7.3.  If X was 4, that would be RH 9, 8.0, 7.3, and 6.2.  And so on.
> In theory, if X was 2, we would do RH 9 and 8.0, not RH 9 and 7.3...

Around RHL8 Red Hat ditched the point release plan, so this longer holds.  
The "major" releases had one major feature: binary compatibility (same 
glibc level) -- which made providing supports and managing updates easier.  
That's still there between RHL8 and RHL8 -- RHL8 had so many bugs we 
wouldn't even consider it here.  Consider RHL9 RHL8.1 and it's pretty 
close.. :-)
 
> Sometimes.  But if we have *more* volunteers then we can do *more* instead
> of *less*.  I say support what ever we have people willing to support.
> We may not get enough people to support 8.0, and if not then it shouldn't
> be supported.  But if we do get enough volunteers to support it, should we
> not allow it and just say "less is more" to them?

Sure, I'm not against supporting what folks want to contribute effort to.   
But in my eyes, the resources are likely to be more or less limited, and 
concentrating on just a few releases would probably help in QA, etc.

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings