Tom Lane wrote:
>
> Yeah. What this is about is how long the *community* supports 7.4...
>
Perhaps the discussion should be more global (and ultimately save time
on having this discussion again in the future). Decide on the policy,
make official and make it obvious. The time I usually hear tossed around
is 5 years. This is the same support period that Ubuntu uses for the
long-term-support releases of their server version - the longest support
period they offer. As a user, 5 years seems a reasonable support period
for a core infrastructure component.
Whatever time-period is chosen, I would make it obvious in a variety of
places:
The versioning policy (add something like "Major releases are supported
through minor-release updates for a period of five years following
initial release." to http://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning).
The FAQ (add an end-of-life FAQ):
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs.FAQ.html
All release notes: I.e. for 7.4: "Release date: 2003-11-17 End-of-life
date: 2008-11-17", for 7.4.21: "Release date: 2008-06-12 End-of-life
date 2008-11-17"
Perhaps even as a comment at the start of the "installation" sections of
the manual: "It is recommended to use the most recent release... Major
releases are supported for..."
Cheers,
Steve