[development] Drop MySQL 3 support

[Antony Simmonds]

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.
> 
> I therefore propose that we formally drop support of MySQL 3 as of 
> Drupal 4.8 which will appear later this year.
> 
> MySQl 4.0's active support will end the last of September, we could 
> consider dropping support for it too. Extended support will run until 
> the end of 2008.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.

A lot of service providers run Debian, which has recently dropped 
security support for the old stable (woody) distribution that shipped 
with MySQL 3.23. http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060601

The current stable (sarge) distribution has been released for about a 
year now, includes both MySQL 4.0 and 4.1, and support for this release 
will probably continue for a couple of years (depending on when etch is 
released)