Am 10.07.25 um 09:52 schrieb Harald Sitter:
On Wed, Jul 9, 2025 at 10:30 PM Nate Graham <n...@kde.org> wrote:
since then the final bug-fix release
is always unsupported the moment it's released.
[...]> We could decide that EOL happens six months after the last release,
but does that really change anything for the user?
(Preamble: I'm using 6.3 as example, but of course this applies to any
other version, too).
TLDR: I think the maximum reasonably possible extension has already been
agreed upon during the Graz Plasma sprint, i.e. the addition of another
bugfix release (6.3.6) .
Longer reasoning:
Giving distros / admins more time to switch over to a new version could
potentially reduce the number of users affected by the EOL by quite a
lot (depending on the extension). But there'll always be people
remaining on 6.3 for much longer, so some EOL date must be set, anyway.
Extending releases for another 6 months (or 3 months, or whatever)
obviously comes with a great workload: Bug triaging, developing and/or
backporting fixes, testing, CI, support-confusion (e.g. if users fail to
report affected version), ... It would kind-of-sort-of make every
release an LTS release, and Nate already wrote about why this is causing
issues AND might not even be super useful. [1] Some distributions also
have much longer update-cycles (debian) and won't benefit from a "short"
extension. Then again, AFAIK debian didn't even ship *any* LTS bugfix
releases for 5.27 (I think they stayed at 5.27.5 for bookworm, didn't
they? )
There's only a limited number of people, resources and work hours (often
in spare time) that can be spent on the entire project, and I don't
think spreading those resources thinner than they already are will
actually benefit the project and the community as a whole.
Coming back to my TLDR: In my opinion (as someone doing none of the
heavy lifting), having the 6th bugfix release is already trying to
consider the user's (justified) needs to the maximum extent that can
reasonably be offered.
Also: let's not forget that there have been 6 bugfix releases already at
this point, most serious bugs should probably have been fixed by now. If
something critical comes up (e.g. a bad regression causing crashes left
and right), exceptions could probably be made - but from past
experience, that will most likely be super rare and thus should not be
taken into account in the default actions and messaging.
[...]
I think it better for everyone involved if we are honest with the user
here. "6.3.6 is as good a 6.3 as you will get, if you still have
problems you need to upgrade to 6.4 and we may be able to find a
solution."
I agree, and I think it also comes down to the message. Here's a draft
(I'm a non-native speaker):
"This is an automatic reply, but we gave it a lot of thought:
Thank you for taking time to report this issue. Reporting issues is
helping the KDE community to improve our software.
Unfortunately, no further releases for Plasma Y (your reported version)
are scheduled. The KDE community (including a lot of volunteers) does
not have the resources to verify or fix issues for versions of Plasma
that will no longer receive further release.
We are very sorry that we can't help you with your issue.
If possible, please update to the currently supported Plasma X and
check, if the issue is present there, too.
If it is not possible to update, here's some things you could do:
- report the issue to your distribution. Maybe someone can have a look
(but be advised that they are usually under heavy work load, too)
- find someone willing to fix the issue (most likely by paying them for
the work) or try to fix the issue yourself
- ask in our forums for a possible solution (workaround) of the issue
This report will be automatically closed now. Feel free to re-open it if
the issue is still present in Plasma X."
Of course, a lot of people will not read this (or any) message, they'll
just see "wont-fix, closed" and go raging about it on SocialMedia, but
there's probably nothing that can be done about that...
Best regards
Martin
HS
[1]
https://pointieststick.com/2025/05/01/notes-from-the-graz-plasma-sprint/
starting at heading "Plasma LTS"
