[infrastructure] Re: [development] Drupal 4.5 unsupported

[Gildas Cotomale]

2006/5/30, Jonathan Lambert <j at firebright.com>:
>
[...]
>  There are a number of ways that OS Projects and Organizations can cope with
> change.  But they are strategic compromises in investment vs return.  If you
> look at this not from a developer's perspective, but from an investor's for
> a moment, you'll see that often these users see Open Source systems as a
> strategy instead of an approach.  From an investor's point-of-view, the
> decision to use an Open Source platform for your development is the decision
> NOT to use a commercial alternative.  And part of this compromise is
> inherently (on the little checklist of OS VS Commercial that business people
> like to make) to embrace this rapid development cycle of OS, be it Linux, eZ
> or Drupal.  It's actually in vogue to consider the rapid speed of revision a
> technical and commercial advantage!  If you need a 5 year support horizon,
> which many organizations do, then you shouldn't be using an Open Source CMS.
>  You should be using Redhat, or IBM, or one of the big CMS vendors.
>
>  Commercial organizations are paid to keep their support organization going
> for versions of their software that are put into production.  Open Source
> projects cannot afford to dedicate the resources to doing so, nor is it
> really in the best interest (or interesting) for the user community to do
> so.  If you need long support horizons, use a commercial product.
>
>  So, the idea of clinging on to a release that is already past is absolutely
> terrible.  It works backwards from what you are claiming to want to achieve
> – i.e. a sustainable user community and happy consumers of the product, and
> lower overall costs (it's false economy to think so).  Absolutely the only
> person it benefits is the consultant who's doing the work.  And nobody
> ultimately benefits.  The people who stay on the version end up on a "fake
> fork", the user community may get materially fragmented, the users end up
> with a "tough luck pal" response from the community for support, and good
> developers end up sidetracked on projects that do nothing to drive the
> platform forward and in fact generally damage everyone involved with them.
> Sometimes tremendously...
[..]
>  Dries has already laid down the word on this, and I agree with his
> approach.  Let's make the archives available (they are), but not spend any
> time on it.  Customers who are on the platform should know the risks of
> using an Open Source platform.
And if support is really needed, it should come from the community of
users/addicts..
> If this is a serious issue, I would post to
> the Drupal.org site some content that will help people understand what they
> are taking on with an Open Source platform, i.e. Rapid integration, many
> upgrades, and relatively continuous integration projects as new tools (like
> the forms api) are released.  I also back Laura's doc (nice approach!), who
> said it mighty well and whom I work with and respect.
>
>  Please, let's move on.
>
Thanks Jonathan, it's a clever summary. It's time now this thread stops.

Regards