Re: A deprecation policy

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> I have been thinking, with a semi-formal deprecation policy, we could 
> make these decisions with more confidence.  My proposed policy goes like 
> this:

I've been thinking about this for a couple of hours, and I keep coming
back to the conclusion that if we actually enforced a policy like this
it would kill Postgres development dead.  It already takes more than a
year, on average, for a proposal to go from idea to out-in-the-field.
This policy would add another two years onto that for anything that
involved user-visible changes, which is most things.  All but the most
persistent developers are simply going to go away and not bother trying
to shepherd their ideas through such a process.

I can see the value of a more formal deprecation policy, but I think
it's gotta have a shorter time constant than this.
        regards, tom lane