non-official support for 5.2.1

[Erik Trulsson]

On Sun, Apr 24, 2005 at 11:35:47AM +0200, Stevan Tiefert wrote:
> Andreas Rudisch schrieb:
> 
> >On Sun, 2005-04-24 at 11:11 +0200, Stevan Tiefert wrote:
> >
> > 
> >
> >>Hello Kris,
> >>
> >>to explain better, what I want (It was my job to specify better what I 
> >>want :-)
> >>
> >>Does the RELENG_5_2 security branch still exist? And if not, when and 
> >>where did they annouced to stop the support for 5.2.1?
> >>
> >>With regards
> >>Stevan
> >>   
> >>
> >
> >
> >http://www.freebsd.org/security/index.html
> >
> >quote:
> >"Older releases are not maintained and users are strongly encouraged to
> >upgrade to one of the supported releases mentioned above."
> >
> >Andreas
> >
> > 
> >
> Hello Andreas,
> 
> I have read this page already and I understood the text.
> 
> Fact was also that the 5.2.1-security-branch should supported till Oct 
> 2005

Where did you find that "fact" ?
As you can see on the webpage referenced above "early adopter" releases
(like 5.2.1) is normally only officially supported for 6 months after
release.  The RELENG_5_2 branch was originally scheduled to only be
supported through July 2004 (6 months after the release of 5.2). After
the release of 5.2.1 (in Feb 2004) this was extended to Dec 2004, and
then simply not extended any further. (Especially since in that time
5.3 had been released as the first -STABLE 5.x release, and all users
of older 5.x releases were recommended to update.)

It has never been promised that RELENG_5_2 would be supported in 2005.

> and only important reasons can stop developing security branch 
> fixes! But why they stop developing the security branch without 
> notifying the people.

They notified people long in advance that the RELENG_5_2 branch would
eventually be abandoned and also when it would happen.

> 
> I mean it is not enough to write a small sentence on a web-site! It 
> should be announced in freebsd-annouce at freebsd.org. But I can not find 
> anything in the archives! The next time they should annouce the 
> interrupt of supporting a security branch!!!

Considering that 5.2.1 was never intended for serious production use, I
think those using it anyway should check for themselves in advance for
how long it is going to be supported.  If they had done so they would
know that support was planned to have been dropped by now.


-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013 at student.uu.se