Hi Adam,

> Am 12.08.2019 um 02:17 schrieb Adam Weinberger <[email protected]>:
> 
> On Sun, Aug 11, 2019 at 5:50 PM Martin Waschbüsch <[email protected]> 
> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Adam,
>> 
>>> Am 11.08.2019 um 23:22 schrieb Adam Weinberger <[email protected]>:
>>> 
>>> On Sun, Aug 11, 2019 at 1:05 PM Franco Fichtner <[email protected]> 
>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Quarterly is essentially useless if the decision is to immediately axe a 
>>>> deprecated release. 3 months are nothing in production environments, if 
>>>> you get 3 months (1,5 months mean) at all and also all other updates and 
>>>> security relevant bug fixes in the same quarterly that you desperately 
>>>> need.
>>>> 
>>>> Yeah, we know that won’t happen so please don’t suggest it.
>>>> 
>>>> That deprecation policy is nice and well all by itself except when it 
>>>> wreaks havoc over the ports infrastructure like in the case of PHP version 
>>>> support where numerous ports are immediately unavailable and incompatible 
>>>> with upgrades.
>>>> 
>>>> Furthermore, the argument that it is more more work to maintain an 
>>>> abandoned version is silly because it’s more work to delete a port that to 
>>>> just keep it in the tree for a while longer.
>>> 
>>> That last part isn't correct. The work of deleting the ports is
>>> largely automated and simple, and it will always happen eventually.
>>> The work involved is in supporting unsupported versions. Our php team
>>> is spread very thin, and they simply cannot support php versions
>>> outside of upstream development. There are no resources to backport
>>> fixes that may or may not be designed to work with older versions
>> 
>> I do not understand this. At all.
>> And I sort of hope I misunderstood you, because it sounds like you think a 
>> maintainer is or may be regarded as someone who can be expected to provide 
>> product support of some kind?
>> I find that notion worrying to say the least.
> 
> If you believe that handling updates, analyzing submitted and upstream
> patches and development, and answering a bevy of questions for every
> major update is effortless, then you drastically underestimate the
> amount of work that goes into the ports tree.

You completely misunderstand me.
I know there is a lot of effort going into this. I disagree only in that I do 
not believe there should be any expectations towards maintainers.
It is voluntary work. Spare time, etc. I am grateful for the effort people put 
into this, but I strongly believe no one should act towards volunteers with any 
expectations as to what they should do, how much time they spend, etc.

So, I find it wrong to say, as I understood you, to remove a package from the 
ports tree because otherwise others people, for instance users of FreeBSD, 
would have the *expectation* of receiving support for those packages.
That perception of any kind of entitlement towards volunteers is wrong, IMHO.

And that is why I answered that part of your message because it is not (for 
reasons stated above) a valid argument against having outdated software in the 
ports tree.
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