Quoting Tim Thome <tthome@xxxxxxx>:
However, as Eric wrote, there are complex production systems that are running RH9, and the pain of upgrading these to the 2.6 kernel, these systems may not be able to make that leap. This bar is going to be hit with other distro's as well, including the RHEL clones.
Yes, true. But the RHEL/clones at least have a 7 year defined period, so I don't see a big problem here.
The only alternative for RH9 users is to migrate outside of the direct RH family, and this is bad karma for us...
I don't think this the only alternative now, unless by RH family you mean the actual RH stuff rather than the clones and off-shoots.
The expectations with Fedora Core were pretty clear, release early and often. We've been very clear with maintenance time line on these releases, specifically that Fedora is not forever :^)
Correct.
RH9 was different in that it was a commercial release, one that folks could purchase in a box with support, etc... the key problem is that RH terminated support very early and abruptly on RH9 as compared to the other RH commercial releases.
That combined with the fact that there was no supported _upgrade_ path. That is, you can not upgrade from RH9 to RHEL and expect RH to support you. You have to do a fresh RHEL install to get any kind of support. It was this double wammy that got people. Had there been an upgrade from RH9 to RHEL, most of the people would have done it...
Suggestion, create a sub-team that supports RH9 exclusively. Remember, we're not implementing new features etc... it's security patches only. We commit to RH9 maintenance through 04/01/07, and then put it to bed. Make it very clear to RH9 users that the end is coming. Nine months is fair warning.
9 months is very generous. 6 would be sufficient IMHO.
As for 7.x, it's my opinion that most people know that it is a very old release, and it's not reasonable to expect further support.
I still think we need to give them the same respect we give RHL 9, since we've always treated them the same in the past.
Lastly, folks need to go and look at the Fedora Legacy front page. We're still telling RH7.2/RH8 users to go to RH7.3 and RH9. Since we're contemplating EOL of support for these releases, we need to stop telling people to migrate to them.
Well, once we decide to drop them, yes, that message should definately change. Until then, well, I'd rather the upgrade from an unsupported one to a supported one, even if the support period is small...
Tim
-- Eric Rostetter The Department of Physics The University of Texas at Austin Go Longhorns! -- fedora-legacy-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legacy-list
