Seeing the End of Life notice for the 2.0.x series reminded me of a potential problem coming up when the 2.1.x series is considered for end of life, and that problem comes from the 2.5.x series allegedly requiring a 2.6.27 minimum kernel version.
The oldest current Ubuntu LTS release is Hardy (8.04). That has a 2.6.24 kernel and should be supported until April 2013. The 2.1.x series is the most recent version of Firebird that can run on it but, as 8.04 goes out of support next year, a cut off date for Firebird 2.1 of 2013 seems fine in this case. However, Redhat Enterprise/Centos 5 uses an even older kernel - 2.6.18 - and that is in support until 2020. Anyone running Firebird on this distro is going to be left without an upgrade path if the Firebird 2.1 series gets the chop in 2013. Assuming that Redhat/Centos 5 users are going to want to upgrade to the latest and greatest is not going to be a reasonable assumption. I have clients in the Safety Critical area and no upgrade is done here without very good reason and takes months and sometimes years of planning and testing. I am in the process right now of writing a paper suggesting Firebird for a particular application and a maintenance policy that does not fix in with Redhat Enterprise is not exactly going to help the case. This issue needs to be resolved long before the next end of life decision is made. I would propose that time should not be the only criteria for deciding on end of life. The lifetime of Firebird releases should be tied in with the lifecycle of major distros and specifically with the kernel versions/core libraries used on those distros and the requirements of a given Firebird version. Tony Whyman MWA Software ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ Firebird-Devel mailing list, web interface at https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/firebird-devel
