[Opendnssec-user] Support of old releases

[Olaf Kolkman]

On Nov 24, 2010, at 4:41 PM, Ondřej Surý wrote:

> You should support OpenDNSSEC releases found in major distros. Next stable Debian will have 1.1.3.
> 

I disagree, I wouldn't want to be kept hostage to the distros which I would hope have their own way of dealing with patches.


What we support depends a lot on what meaning we assign to version numbers.

I believe we agreed that we have collectively assigned the following meaning: major-version, minor-version, patch-level

The policy that NLnet Labs uses for its other software:

> Support is provided in respect of the releases with the highest Minor Version and Patch Version level. In the event a new Version is released (e.g. from 2.3.4 to 3.0.0), support will also be provided on the latest Minor Version of the previous Main Version (2.3.4) for a period of one year from the release of the new Main Version (3.0.0). In the event that, during this period, a new Patch or Minor Version of the previous Main Version appear then support on these Versions will only be provided for the remainder of the one-year-period.


This does mean that you have to make a good trade-off when to throw a minor and when to throw in a major version. I do not think that we can maintain this policy with a major change such as a rewrite of the signer in another language as a minor version number change. So as an alternative:

Maintain the latest Major,minor
maintain Major,minor-1 for half a year
and 
maintain major-1,minor for half a year (or a year)

Always work from the latest patch.

In any case, what is most important is that the policy is announced in advance.

--Olaf

________________________________________________________ 

Olaf M. Kolkman                        NLnet Labs
                                       Science Park 140, 
http://www.nlnetlabs.nl/               1098 XG Amsterdam

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