PHP version retirement

[Martin Waschbüsch]

Hi Adam,

> Am 11.08.2019 um 23:22 schrieb Adam Weinberger <adamw at adamw.org>:
> 
> On Sun, Aug 11, 2019 at 1:05 PM Franco Fichtner <franco at lastsummer.de> wrote:
>> 
>> Quarterly is essentially useless if the decision is to immediately axe a deprecated release. 3 months are nothing in production environments, if you get 3 months (1,5 months mean) at all and also all other updates and security relevant bug fixes in the same quarterly that you desperately need.
>> 
>> Yeah, we know that won’t happen so please don’t suggest it.
>> 
>> That deprecation policy is nice and well all by itself except when it wreaks havoc over the ports infrastructure like in the case of PHP version support where numerous ports are immediately unavailable and incompatible with upgrades.
>> 
>> Furthermore, the argument that it is more more work to maintain an abandoned version is silly because it’s more work to delete a port that to just keep it in the tree for a while longer.
> 
> That last part isn't correct. The work of deleting the ports is
> largely automated and simple, and it will always happen eventually.
> The work involved is in supporting unsupported versions. Our php team
> is spread very thin, and they simply cannot support php versions
> outside of upstream development. There are no resources to backport
> fixes that may or may not be designed to work with older versions

I do not understand this. At all.
And I sort of hope I misunderstood you, because it sounds like you think a maintainer is or may be regarded as someone who can be expected to provide product support of some kind?
I find that notion worrying to say the least.

I cannot speak for others, but my expectation is exactly that which is found in the BSD license:
That software is provided AS IS.

Also, neither I, nor Franco, I suspect, are talking about backports the way e.g. Debian is doing it. (Indeed, the word backports was introduced in this discussion by someone else.)

The point being made is that the end of upstream development on a piece of software should not, in and of itself, be sufficient grounds for its removal from ports.
It does not cease to be useful a couple of weeks after its latest release simply because there is no one actively developing it anymore.

Martin