RFE: Retire Fedora Core 4 only _after_ FC6 has been released.

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Wed, 2006-01-18 at 22:07 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Ian Pilcher wrote:
> 
> >Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>The policy actually sort of is "a few months after the next release so
> >>that people can see it being stable enough". A good anchor for that "few
> >>months" is -test2 release.
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >As Keith said, if this is the policy then it should be clearly stated.
> >Also, the fact that support for FC3 was extended because of the 9 month
> >development cycle of FC5 isn't very consistent with this point of view.
> >
> >  
> >
> FC X goes legacy when FC Z test 2 gets released. Always been policy. 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ

- Nitpick: There have been changes made to the EOL timeframe for at
least two of the three FC releases so saying "Always been _policy_"
isn't accurate.  ("This is what's happened in all past releases" would
be more truthful.)

- Of actual importance: Arjan's take is that the unexpressed policy is
that FC X goes legacy a short time after FC Y so that FC Y can shake out
any major bugs before people are forced to upgrade or EOL.  This has
happened to coincide with FC Z-test2 but it really doesn't have any
relation to the FC-Z timeframe.  It's strictly a FC X -> FC X+1
relationship.

One final point on wording and thought processes.  If people think that
"legacy" is a loaded term, "end of life" is even worse.  If the work of
supporting the distribution is just shifting from one part of the Fedora
Foundation to another ("The Release Group" to "The Maintenance Group")
then the release is _not_ ending.  EOL should be aplied when the
Maintenance Group decides that they are going to stop support for that
Core Release.  "Maintenance Mode" or some other buzzword can be applied
to what actually happens when Red Hat stops spending manhours on the
release and the Maintenance Group starts taking over.

-Toshio
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