[bt-devel] Bug-a-thon II (support lifetime)

[Thomas Abthorpe]

On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:45:53 -0800
Gary Holmlund <gary.holmlund at gmail.com> wrote:

> Jonathan Marsden wrote:
> > Thomas Abthorpe wrote:
> >
> >     
> >> During our last Bug-a-thon, we talked about establishing an End Of
> >> Life (EOL) support convention. It was agreed during our little
> >> summit, that most major Linux distros, Free/PCBSD and (soon) windows
> >> packages have active maintainers to ensure current updates, and that
> >> we will support current versions at this time.
> >>       
> >
> > Clarification please: does this mean that all BT releases prior to 2.3.3
> > are now instantly unsupported?
> >
> > There is a *big* difference between what gets released (privately and
> > somewhat unofficially) into a PPA or personal repository, and what is in
> > the official current Linux distribution(s).
> >
> > Will the BT team be willing to support of the version of BT that is in
> > the current release of each major Linux distro (possibly supporting the
> > version in Debian testing, rather than the one in Debian stable, since
> > the inter-release gap for Debian stable is several years)?
> >   
> > I would certainly hope they can do this.  If not, IMO we might almost as
> > well not include BT in the distros at all, and just use PPAs and other
> > independent repositories instead, so as to ensure that all new end users
> > will install a "supported" version of the application!
> >
> > As a current relevant example: Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic just released with
> > BibleTime 2.0-1 packages in it.  Unless bugs therein are severe enough
> > to warrant what Ubuntu calls an SRU (Stable Release Update), that *is*
> > what Karmic has in it.  Period.  Not 2.3.3, not 2.4rc1 either.
> >     
> We did make a decision on the support issue, but I don't see that it was 
> a hard decision. If our understanding of the issue changes we could 
> certainly change our position on it.

As I stated in my initial mail out, the other participants would be able to
fill the gap.

Being the token non-linuxian in the crew, I am still trying to get a grasp of
linux flavours, release cycles, etc etc etc. Please do not misinterpret what I
was trying to say as being a hard and fast rule, it is more of a guideline.
Since BT has had a regular and deliberate release cycle for most of this
year, we have discovered between packages, PPAs and other means of
package maintenance that our client base has been able to keep reasonably
current.

So when people still show up looking for help on 1.6.4, we can fall back to
an age old means of IT support by referencing an EOL policy.

Sorry for any confusion my email may have confused.


Thomas

-- 
Thomas Abthorpe

http://www.bibletime.info