Feature proposal: Extended Life Cycle Support

[Jeroen van Meeuwen]

On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 16:25:08 +0100, Christopher Brown
<snecklifter at gmail.com>
wrote:
> 2009/7/6 Jeroen van Meeuwen <kanarip at kanarip.com>:
>>
>> On Sun, 5 Jul 2009 22:13:07 +0100, Christopher Brown
>> <snecklifter at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Honestly, I'm impressed by your persistence but I think simply trying
>>> to re-instate Fedora Legacy (which it sounds like this is what you are
>>> trying to do) is doomed to permanent failure.
>>>
>>
>> I love your argumentation behind this statement;
>>
>> Why do you think it's doomed exactly? Is it reasoning following the past
>> Fedora Legacy initiatives (and failure), or is there anything new?
> 
> That plus the fact that you have Red Hat, the major backers of Fedora,
> producing a distribution that is geared towards long term support for
> their clients. Hence any initiative to increase the length of time
> Fedora is supported will not (I believe) receive anything more than
> lip service from RH. I completely understand that and it makes
> financial sense.
> 

"lip service" doesn't translate very well but I think I got the clue;

If you're saying that Red Hat would choose to not support this initiative
for whatever their reasons, may be, then so be it. I can't control what
they do and I wouldn't want to. I can control however what I do with or
without Red Hat's blessing.

> I was simply trying to identify what the requirements are for LTS on
> Fedora. I think simply saying "Fedora needs LTS" is doomed as the past
> has proved. "Those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it." -
> George Santayana
> 

I'm too eager to respond with similar phrases as put onto the Feature wiki
page; if the difference between the long term support model for RHEL and an
extended life cycle model for Fedora isn't clear enough, then how can I
explain the added value of a commercial company backing it's product,
stable API/ABI offerings, hardware and software certifications, a phone
number, the differences between 7 years or 19 months, desktop environments
vs. enterprise solutions, prolonged availability of security updates
(only!) vs. prolonged application support (including security updates), and
the difference between 19 months and 3 years?

> The sooner Fedora gets out of its identity crisis the better.

I wholeheartedly agree, but it's a completely different discussion.

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen
-kanarip