Re: Do we really need a 7.4.22 release now?

Tom Lane wrote:
>
> Yeah.  What this is about is how long the *community* supports 7.4...
>   
Perhaps the discussion should be more global (and ultimately save time 
on having this discussion again in the future). Decide on the policy, 
make official and make it obvious. The time I usually hear tossed around 
is 5 years. This is the same support period that Ubuntu uses for the 
long-term-support releases of their server version - the longest support 
period they offer. As a user, 5 years seems a reasonable support period 
for a core infrastructure component.

Whatever time-period is chosen, I would make it obvious in a variety of 
places:

The versioning policy (add something like "Major releases are supported 
through minor-release updates for a period of five years following 
initial release." to http://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning).

The FAQ (add an end-of-life FAQ): 
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs.FAQ.html

All release notes: I.e. for 7.4: "Release date: 2003-11-17  End-of-life 
date: 2008-11-17", for 7.4.21: "Release date: 2008-06-12 End-of-life 
date 2008-11-17"

Perhaps even as a comment at the start of the "installation" sections of 
the manual: "It is recommended to use the most recent release... Major 
releases are supported for..."

Cheers,
Steve