-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Somebody in the thread at some point said: > Andy Green wrote: >> Yes indeed. Also I know this is not a popular subject but in the same >> vein looking ahead, we need a deprecation policy for product support. > > I think what makes this subject unpopular is that deprecation isn't > really a concept that applies here.
It wasn't that unpopular in the end. And "to deprecate" someone is different from the meaning of the word deployed here: ''In computer software standards and documentation, the term deprecation is applied to software features that are superseded and should be avoided. Although deprecated features remain in the current version, their use may raise warning messages recommending alternate practices, and deprecation may indicate that the feature will be removed in the future. ...'' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deprecation >> If we can make sure that we help any community effort to take over >> development on products that go out of our post-EOL support period >> (whatever that is) this doesn't have to make a big problem. Plus the >> userspace is pretty much shared again reducing the hit. > > Yes, end of support sounds much friendlier than "deprecation". > And this is indeed how support should be phased from the hands of You can call it "end of support" like I did, I don't mind. But I hope we can talk about things in a straightforward way to the customer, not in grandstanding soliloquies to hide the unpleasant fact, but in terms of a "deprecation policy" like most manufacturers would have, so everyone knows where they stand rather than leaving people with wrong expectations about what can be delivered in reality. (Maybe we have this already, but nobody mentioned it to me.) At some point (I guess it varies widely by product category, for mobile phones in general I think they dance to a fast beat) we won't be doing stuff or support for any given product any more, it's just a fact found everywhere else too. No favours are done to anyone by dancing around it. It's (mostly) FOSS so I would expect any active users who are interested to take up maintainence on the related software before and after that as I wrote originally, and we definitely should and no doubt will try to help that along when the time comes. So far as that goes they'll certainly be in a way better position than holding a deprecated phone from a closed vendor. - -Andy -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFH6o0kOjLpvpq7dMoRAmOeAJ9bM3Pu4IJh1Lgm5dQSE0rnoxwkwwCbBeYC xvdyyXSe0eUyjWAIzPH2bvU= =yER7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
