PHP version retirement

[Martin Waschbüsch]

Hi Adam,

> Am 12.08.2019 um 02:17 schrieb Adam Weinberger <adamw at adamw.org>:
> 
> On Sun, Aug 11, 2019 at 5:50 PM Martin Waschbüsch <martin at waschbuesch.de> wrote:
>> 
>> 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.
> 
> If you believe that handling updates, analyzing submitted and upstream
> patches and development, and answering a bevy of questions for every
> major update is effortless, then you drastically underestimate the
> amount of work that goes into the ports tree.

You completely misunderstand me.
I know there is a lot of effort going into this. I disagree only in that I do not believe there should be any expectations towards maintainers.
It is voluntary work. Spare time, etc. I am grateful for the effort people put into this, but I strongly believe no one should act towards volunteers with any expectations as to what they should do, how much time they spend, etc.

So, I find it wrong to say, as I understood you, to remove a package from the ports tree because otherwise others people, for instance users of FreeBSD, would have the *expectation* of receiving support for those packages.
That perception of any kind of entitlement towards volunteers is wrong, IMHO.

And that is why I answered that part of your message because it is not (for reasons stated above) a valid argument against having outdated software in the ports tree.