Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2001 15:04:16 -0500 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@mail.iowna.com> To: Eric Harrison <Eric.Harrison@veritas.com> Cc: "'freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org'" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: FreeBSD Supported Releases Message-ID: <3A5628C0.8FE1B776@mail.iowna.com> References: <E157E02AD50CD41180EE00508B6A722D01D87CB6@mtvxch05.veritas.com>
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They're supported forever (theoretically) When a release is no longer being actively developed, it goes into "maintenance mode" whereby only security problems and major bugs are fixed (however, but the time it's in maintenance mode there are no major bugs left) Probably, there's a limit at which nobody will care anymore and all support will be dropped, but in theory, as long as the system is in use by someone, maintenance fixes can be made. Consider, however, that the "community energy to support older previous releases" does not exist in open source projects. In a company that writes software, it's necessary to specifically designate some people to supporting older software, in open source, as long as someone with some programming skill is interested, support exists, regardless of what some "board of directors/Community (what's that supposed to mean)" say or don't say about it. There's no great Ogre of an administrator who can authoritatively designate someone to do this or do that. -Bill Eric Harrison wrote: > > Hello, > I'm a product manager doing some research and wondering if there is a policy > or guideline that the FreeBDS board of directors/Community uses to gauge > release lifecycles. For example, how long will "community" energy be spent > to support older previous releases, over new. Basically how long will a > prior version be "supported". While this is a clear concept in commercial > software firms, don't yet understand how this works with FreeBSD and > community maintained OS. What I'm trying to ultimately decide is how long > we need to provide support for prior FreeBSD releases. > Thanks for your consideration, Best regards, To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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