[consulting] preparing clients for Drupal 5 obsolesence

[Christian Pearce]

On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 9:02 PM, Eric Goldhagen <eric at openflows.com> wrote:

> At 11:34 PM +0100 3/9/09, Lafont, Denis wrote:
> >+1 for me.
> >
> >All our new engagements are D6, and starting to convince D5 users to
> >switch to D6 now that most key modules have been migrated.
> >
> >Your "no more security patch in 9 months" is a very valid point ;-)
>
> We are starting any new projects that come in using D6 but intend to
> maintain the sites of any number of clients that will still run D5
> for some unknown time into the future.
>
> Many of our smaller non-profit clients can't afford to upgrade often
> enough to keep up with the pace of drupal development.
>
> Our solution has been to backport security patches that are relevant
> to older versions. We did this for 4.6 when 5 came out, and have been
> doing it with 4.7 since the release of 6. This gives folks the extra
> time necessary to handle the cost and time of upgrades.
>
> Once 7 is out, we'll do the same for 5.
>
> We've asked a couple of times to have a space on Drupal.org or in the
> repository for these backports but have met resistance, so we host
> them on our own site as a service to the community.
> http://openflows.com/drupal/security
>

This is great.  I have about 5 sites I did for a customer.  Facing the idea
of upgrading them anytime soon would probably drive them away.  So I
considered doing the backports myself.  Glad to see someone picked up that
torch. Most of the fixes are trival.

I can see why you were met with resistance.  But as a consultant you can't
always convince your customers to upgrade.  And if they are happy with the
functionality why through out the code base and make the spend the money.
This sort of reminds me of http://fedoralegacy.org/.  I guess it eventually
shutdown.  I imagine because upgrading just got easier and easier.  Perhaps
if drupal upgrades get easier and easier then the cost goes down and it
becomes a no brainer.

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-- 
Christian
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