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Date:      Thu, 2 Jun 2016 20:08:22 +0000
From:      Grzegorz Junka <list1@gjunka.com>
To:        freebsd-ports@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: old ports/packages
Message-ID:  <a188fad9-1a95-a809-7e1f-04c39033b99b@gjunka.com>
In-Reply-To: <5809f808-8b16-93ed-5351-828a7d68eb2b@unsane.co.uk>
References:  <03cc4012-026e-c007-09e1-ee45524f1b95@elischer.org> <B32DD056A6281C191CD35AA2@ogg.in.absolight.net> <c528a76d-5b94-01a3-f27e-7d174faf544e@freebsd.org> <1FAFDF989841D03604BB448B@atuin.in.mat.cc> <7b8d22c6-1fed-d517-9f89-693b88dfc358@freebsd.org> <20160504070341.GV740@mail0.byshenk.net> <3dfd6fea-da32-b922-65d1-f64b8e113112@toco-domains.de> <6e340f95-6d10-4991-0cd6-95d336e2f044@gjunka.com> <3e55c7d8-801c-a2b3-e92e-9945e896142b@toco-domains.de> <5809f808-8b16-93ed-5351-828a7d68eb2b@unsane.co.uk>

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On 31/05/2016 13:59, Vincent Hoffman-Kazlauskas wrote:
>
> On 31/05/2016 14:17, Torsten Zuehlsdorff wrote:
>> On 04.05.2016 19:17, Grzegorz Junka wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> LTS of the base system or ports? The base system is already quite well
>>> supported long-term.
>> This is a very good question, because it is not that clear. But let me
>> state right here: No, the base system has not a good long-term support!
>>
>> Yes, we have 2 years for the latest release, but 2 years seems to be
>> very short for firms. Often they want 5 years.
>>
>> And you are forced to update. You can't stay on say 10.1 or 10.2 because
>> the support will end 2016. Which is short, because 10.2 was released in
>> august 2015. This is only one and a half year.
>
> To be fair the support is last release + 2 years, supporting a minor
> version for more than 2 years seems unreasonable, compare to say redhat
> a major commercial vendor. They provide up to 10 years sure but for a
> major version ie 6 not a minor version ie 6.1. In fact their policy
> page(1*) says "Under a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, all
> available RHSAs and RHBAs are provided for the current active minor
> release until the availability of the next minor release" and that if
> you want a minor release supported for longer you pay more and even then
> its only approx 2 years, (example 6.7 (released 2015-07-22) ends July
> 31, 2017)
> So far for me updating freebsd minor releases has been much the same
> experience as upgrading Centos/RHEL minor releases.

It's not fair to compare RedHat to FreeBSD. Companies pay good money to 
maintain the support for the systems they are using. They don't pay 
FreeBSD a penny. I think the real issue preventing a wider adoption at 
companies is not that there is no LTS but that there is no commercial 
entity that would maintain its own LTS version of FreeBSD base and 
packages and make it available to companies with paid support options. 
There are only companies who can provide general support for FreeBSD as 
a service.

I recently worked at a company who did exactly that, they bought Red Hat 
specifically because they could pay for it and forget about updates and 
maintenance (at least that what the management thought - for the 
developers it was a pain in the ** because most packages were outdated 
or not available at all and to do any real development we had to compile 
the necessary applications from sources anyway).

Grzegorz



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