[Bug 273017] The meanings of 'legacy' – in particular, for things such as FreeBSD 12.4-RELEASE, which is no longer production

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=273017

Graham Perrin ◐ <grahamperrin@gmail.com> changed:

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--- Comment #15 from Graham Perrin ◐ <grahamperrin@gmail.com> ---
It took me a couple of weeks to rediscover this (sorry), I stumbled into it
whilst preparing an unrelated diff for the download page: 

<https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-doc/commit/b1fcdc951599e9baf7e71e59c8dcee3b5c10d3d6#diff-c023f144bb7cacd65b6200d261546c696d5b4d91a8b5dd26c435a2c4ccf08383R13-R17>

> … Legacy releases are for users wishing to stay with a more 
> conservative upgrade strategy. …

– and linked from the preceding comment:
<https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=266094#c2>, which reminds
me: 

> Is this true? … No mention of legacy in the February 2015 
> 'Changes to the FreeBSD Support Model' 
> <https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2015-February/001624.html>. 

----

Now I see, the '=== Legacy Release' section of the page was actively used a
couple of weeks before I became a mentee: 

<https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-doc/commit/b67049ece14c995e36f8554813fd624169735b8b>

I don't want to spend too much time digging through ancient history, I guess
that thoughts of _conservatism_ were partly rooted in legacy release
engineering. From legacy
<https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/releng/#introduction>: 

> … To service our most conservative users, individual release branches 
> were introduced with FreeBSD 4.3. These release branches are created 
> shortly before a final release is made. After the release goes out, 
> only the most critical security fixes and additions are merged onto the 
> release branch. 

– 4.3 was fourteen years before the changes to the support model. 

---

Fast-forward to this month: 

> I would say that legacy means "we don't recommend using this if you're 
> setting up a new system, but it's still supported in case you're 
> running an older system".
> 
> As far as FreeBSD releases are concerned, I would say that FreeBSD 
> X.* becomes "legacy" once FreeBSD (X+1).1-RELEASE ships. 
> Some people won't want to use a .0 release, but once we get to 
> .1 I would advise everyone to use that rather than a 
> previous major version.

– <https://old.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/15l74km/-/jv9db9l/>

This interpreted meaning (there are others) seems to differ significantly from
the conservative upgrade mindset. No one person is right, or wrong :-)

----

I envisage a coordinated enhancement to the download page that should negate
the need to describe any version as legacy …

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