[development] Drop MySQL 3 support

[Martin Afanasjew]

Gerhard Killesreiter wrote:
> Hi there!
> 
> MySQL AB (the company behind our most used database) has announced a 
> change in support options for their database products.
> 
> http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/mysql_lifecycle_policy.pdf
> 
> According to this document, the active support for MySQL 3.23 will end 
> at the last of this month (ie on two weeks) and the extended support 
> will end on the end of this year.

This is a really strange document. According to it would be worth 
dropping MySQL 4.1 as well since they stop supporting it by the end of 
this year. And if you compute the time between GA (general availability) 
and end of active support it gets shorter with every release. I really 
don't understand why this is the way it is...

> Dropping both MySQL 3 and 4.0 would enable us to rewrite some parts of 
> our SQL queries. The extend of this would need to be researched.

Dropping support outdated versions is fine as long as there are good 
technical reasons and I fully support this. Having said this I really 
would like to see some examples where Drupal would improve due to this 
change. I hope it's not just for the sake of dropping support...

> I know that people will argue with "but there are so many ISPs that 
> still run 3.23". ISPs that still run 3.23 after it has been retired by 
> the supporting company are probably not worth the money you them.

3.23 is simply rock solid and as long as it is properly supported I 
can't see a reason for hosters to upgrade. Especially since almost all 
software (including Drupal) still supports it...

Martin