On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Denice wrote: >> Yes, of course... but I'm whining mostly over the fact that RHL 8.0 comes >> out.. we start testing it, we wait for the first erratas to come out so >> that it becomes more "mature".. we start porting it.. and within we're >> ready to start pumping out workstations or something like that to >> customers, there's another major release out so we need to start the >> freeking thing again.. and when we've installed and shipped the computer >> out, it's gone 9 months.. 3 months later, RedHat will stop making security >> fixes, etc. > >Well, as it has been said before, the one year thing is a minimum; they >will probably (and almost certainly need to) make at least some security >fixes available well beyond a year. It would be suicidal to stop issuing >very important updates for the backbone services that linux is famous for: >web, bind, sendmail, etc. It would be a public relations disaster for >Red Hat to NOT provide patches for cases we have seen before -- some >destructive worm sweeping across the internet. So I am going to chose >to believe, from all I've read, that certain important security patches will >be available over some longer period of time -- until proved otherwise.
The dates that are published on the Red Hat web site for product "end of life" are indeed the product's currently projected "end of life". After the target dates, no further erratum for anything at all, security or otherwise are planned. These dates are however as indicated, subject to change based on paying customer demand. If a particular release is very popular, then the dates may be extended. In such a case, the dates on the website would most likely be updated to reflect a new date. However, you should plan your system upgrades based on the dates present on the website at any given time, because those dates are indeed the official end of life dates we are projecting, and "end of life" is defined as "there will be no further software updates after this date". <disclaimer> I'm only stating these things in an attempt to clarify any misunderstandings you may have on the definition of "end of life". My clarifications are not in turn my own personal interpretation of our Red Hat policies, and are not "official". If you require official confirmation of what I've stated above, please contact an official Red Hat representative directly. I do however recommend against making the assumptions you've made above, as I do not believe your assumptions match up with the described policies on the Red Hat support web pages. </disclaimer> -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat -- Phoebe-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list
