Extras updates for FC3 and older? (was: Re: Mono package policy)

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 20:05:08 -0500, Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams wrote:

> On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 23:26 +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 09:44:49 -0500, Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams wrote:
> > 
> > > On Thu, 2006-01-12 at 17:22 +0330, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 2006-01-10 at 12:11 -0600, Tom 'spot' Callaway wrote:
> > > > > - that mono will not be considered for inclusion in Extras for FC-3/FC-4
> > > > > until FC-5 goes GOLD.
> > > > 
> > > > FC3 will be unsupported when FC5 test2 comes out. Should we still allow
> > > > new FC3 packages in extras after that?!
> > > 
> > > It's at the maintainer's discretion. Note that FE currently has some
> > > packages with branches going all the way back to RHL9.
> > 
> > No. Fedora Extras is only for FC3 and above. The older branches are
> > fedora.us stuff.
> 
> Nonetheless there is sufficient metadata in CVS for them. The
> buildsystem is another issue though.

It's not that easy. Even if a few packagers still wanted to support RHL9
(as an example) with Extras updates (or updates for old packages from
fedora.us, or even with new Extras), for the community project there must
be the decision _whether to support such an old release officially or
not_. It's a bit like "all or nothing". It would be bad to offer a
repository full of stuff which is out-of-date, insecure, untested, hardly
used anymore, and so on, just because a few bits are kept up-to-date. If a
few packagers continued with updates beyond an announced end-of-life, that
even might confuse users out there, who see the dates of the packages and
might believe the repository is still alive. End-of-life of a release of
Extras ought to mean: everyone, stop shipping updates and move on. That
ought to be policy.