[development] Drupal 4.5 unsupported

[Gerhard Killesreiter]

Larry Garfield wrote:
> On Saturday 27 May 2006 12:24, Khalid B wrote:
>   
>>> Why not keep them for historical purposes ?
>>> Maybe create an "Archived releases" section somewhere and
>>> keep them there ??
>>>       
>> They can always be checked out from the CVS repository using
>> the DRUPAL-4-5 tag.
>>     
>
> If you're not a developer, CVS access means bupkis to you.
>
> I have to agree with Lisa on this one.  Whether we like it or not, Drupal has 
> evolved from an open source project into an open source product.  That means 
> we do need to pay attention to things like PR, support, customer relations, 
> etc.  Marketing comes automatically if those are done correctly (ah, the 
> wonders of the Internet).  
>   

I personally had preferred that we had mentioned the fact that 4.5 is 
discontinued explicitly in the security advisories, although I am not 
sure they are an appropriate place for this. Maybe somebody wants to 
write an obituary.

> The fact that we mention 4.5 on the site doesn't automatically mean that we 
> have to provide extensive support and upgrades for it.  As long as it is 
> properly marked as such, then it can be a convenience service but an 
> important one.

No. Who would want to download these files?

People who have a 4.5 site already have the files. Nobody else has any 
reason to download them. People should upgrade since Drupal 4.5 is 
insecure. If the removal of downloadable contrib modules for 4.5 serves 
as an incentive to get them going, I consider this an even better idea.

>   Say:
>
> - Development release: (CVS snapshot)
> - Current release: (latest 4.7-tagged version)
> - Legacy release: (latest 4.6-tagged version)
> - Archived releases: (any old tarballs from previous tags)
>
> And then describe on the page that devs should use Devel version, everyone 
> else should use Current, Legacy is for security patches only, and Archived 
> is "unsupported, but provided as a convenience".
>   

It is merely confusing. I'd surprised if you still could buy or download 
discontinued versions of commercial software if that is what you want to 
compare Drupal to.

> Remember, 4.5 isn't that old.  It was the stable version at the beginning of 
> last year.

In Drupal terms this is very old, sorry to say so. This past release 
cycle took over a year which is an exceptionally long development period 
wrt Drupal. We used to have two, and once even three releases per year.

>   I know a government office that is using a 4.6 site I built for 
> them last fall as an internal application.  I'd hate for them to suddenly be 
> unable to even find 4.6-targeted modules this fall when 4.7++ is released and 
> we go through this routine again.
>   

They will still be able to find them through our web interface to CVS. 
Maybe they should speak to you about an upgrade...

Interested parties wil observe that there aren't any earlier releases 
than 4.5 listed on drupal.org. Our policy was always to support the 
latest two releases. If we do support, then we offer tarballs, if we 
don't we don't.

Unless something better comes up, I will remove the files tomorrow.

Cheers,
    Gerhard