On 05/09/2011 11:43 AM, Robert Haas wrote:
Interesting.  You could argue that once 8.3 is our earliest supported
release that we could even shrink the support window because the
argument "I can't dump/reload my data" would be gone.
Personally, I think the support window is on the borderline of being
too short already.  There are several Linux distributions out there
that offer 5-year support for certain releases.

Some (RH?) offer significantly longer periods.

I agree that we should not reduce the support window. The fact that we can do in place upgrades of the data only addresses one pain point in upgrading. Large legacy apps require large retesting efforts when upgrading, often followed by lots more work renovating the code for backwards incompatibilities. This can be a huge cost for what the suits see as little apparent gain, and making them do it more frequently in order to stay current will not win us any friends. I often want to wait a while after a release for certain customers, while it beds down, and to get them to start moving towards upgrading well before it's the last minute. That makes an effective life of four years or less per release as things are now. That's plenty short enough.

cheers

andrew

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