[infrastructure] Re: [development] Drupal 4.5 unsupported

[Gildas Cotomale]

2006/5/30, Richard Archer <drupal.org at juggernaut.com.au>:
> At 11:02 PM -0700 29/5/06, Jonathan Lambert wrote:
>
> >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
>
> This is where Drupal has real problems. Because Drupal's API
> changes so radically and so often, it pretty much forces
> established sites with any customizations at all to stick with
> whatever version they first built their site on.
>
Hmm. I'm new to Drupal (i jump into it with a 4.3) and i'm not an
active developer (i.e i only do my own developpement and test alot
-but don't have oportunity to report a bug because those i've noticed
were already submited- however, since 4.6, a part of my business -yes
i'm consultant and own a web agency- is based on Drupal).
I agree with the point that Drupal's API changes often, and it's a
good thing.. It's a good point because this let Drupal in the
competition and show an evolution of the product (being more and more
mature and able to face the new needs). This has been debated many
times.
However, i don't agree when you say that those changes are always or
often radical.. For far i know the major change was the node system
the introduction of taxynomani (users can see them and love them),
then now the new FAPI (i know developers do/will love it) and AJAX
stuffs (this later is only cosmetic/marketing and is done the right
way : inobstructive and degrade well). Those major changes were really
needed, but they don't occur every morning.. In another hand, Drupal
team always try to archive back compatibility ; that's not always the
same with to other CMS.. And if we refuse to go ahead, we'll be in the
same situation as PHP-Nuke (people will fork and do those changes and
users will follow them one day or another leting us with a
young-so-old  baby)..
Now, with time passing, users less need to interact directly with core
(let this side for modules) because Drupal is becoming more and more
easy and customisable (a good reason to upgrade).

> And since people (at least the ones I know) expect their site
> to last longer than 12 months they will inevitably find
> themselves using an insecure, unsupported version of Drupal.
>
Drupal is a bit like Linux kernel and many FSF tools :] Old versions
are not really abandonned but not official supported.. because there's
no human ressource for that.. As mentionned by Dries, old versions may
be updated if there are people to give them some love (essentialy
patching and reviewing submited patches..). This is more than what can
offer many projects at SourceForge..