RFE: Retire Fedora Core 4 only _after_ FC6 has been released.

[Arjan van de Ven]

On Wed, 2006-01-18 at 14:50 +0200, Gilboa Davara wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I've been following a very interesting discussion in fedora-list about
> the recent transfer of FC3 to Fedora Legacy.
> 
> Following Rahul's suggestion, I'm starting this discussion in -devel.
> 
> I'm asking the FC foundation to consider the following:
> 
> 1. Fedora's policy dictates that old releases (Current - 2) will be
> retired once the new release hits Test2. 

I'm missing in your whole reasoning the link between the transfer to
legacy and upgrading. You imply it, but you don't explain the causal
relationship, which I think isn't there.

The policy actually sort of is "a few months after the next release so
that people can see it being stable enough". A good anchor for that "few
months" is -test2 release.

> This policy has one glaring
> drawback: User that seek an upgrade can either (1) install a mid-life
> release (FC4 in this case) or (2) install a beta release. (FC5 Test2 in
> this case).

this is true for any update decision unless you make that decision right
at the point in time a new release just came out.

> This being I suspect that most users will play the waiting game before
> making a decision. They'll wait for the FC5 release and check how it
> behaves before making a decision, which in turn, will leave them
> vulnerable to security exploits.

I don't agree with this "which in turn". Fedora Legacy *WILL* release
updates for such security problems. The only thing that changed is which
people will provide the updates. That's it. Well and the policy that
only the most critical things (eg security updates and data corruption
bugs etc) get fixed. But.. don't you want that from a 14th month old
distro.. if it works for you for 14 months, you don't want mass upgrades
to new packages just for a few features you obviously didn't need anyway
(because if you did you'd have upgraded)



> Extending the life of FC4 by (a mere?) ~2 months, will give FC4 users
> seeking an upgrade a chance to make an informed decision based upon how
> FC6 behaves, without leaving them open to security risks.

And then the next request will be that "FC5 is so new, please allow us 3
months before FC5 becomes stable". And voila, you're back at "test 2"
again.

The current policy is based on the idea "You go to the next release. But
we'll be nice and give you several months for that next release to be
seen as stable". That's it. You are effectively asking to extend it a
full release.. (well you're not asking that, but that's the implication
of what you're asking given the very obvious and known next question
that will happen)



(Disclaimer: I don't work for Red Hat and thus don't speak for Red Hat)