[development] Contrib longevity

[Earl Miles]

Larry Garfield wrote:
> Mostly I'm asking to see if there's a consensus on what the "responsible 
> maintainer" thing to do is, since I've a few modules that I'm in the process 
> of upgrading and I'm not how long I should bother to deal with feature 
> requests for the 4.7 versions.  (I figure it goes without saying that bug 
> fixes for 4.7 for as long as Drupal 4.7 gets bug fixes is "the responsible 
> thing to do".)

For Views I am adding features to both the Drupal 5 and Drupal 4.7 versions 
where it is feasible and not difficult, because at the moment it's easier for 
me if the two versions stay roughly in sync. Where it is a pain, though, 4.7 
doesn't get the new feature.

Also, Views is one of the most widely used 4.7 modules, and I feel some 
obligation to keep it going at least until Drupal 6 is available, at which 
point I will likely EOL the 4.7 version entirely, as I don't want to maintain 3 
  stable branches.

For my other modules, it varies from module to module, but most of them will go 
into bugfix-only mode for 4.7 and features will go into 5. It depends upon how 
heavily used I think it is. Of course, for most of these modules I'm more than 
willing to let other people help maintain them, and I'm still looking for 
people to step up and take some of my lower priority modules such as delicious, 
and I'm really hoping for someone to come help work on forum access.