Re: Thoughts on maintaining 7.3

On Wed, 2003-10-01 at 09:14, Robert Treat wrote:
> Maybe I've mis-read Joshua's intentions, but I got the impression that
> this 7.3 maintainer would follow the patches list and backport patches
> whenever possible. This way folks coding for 7.4/7.5 can stay focused on
> that, but folks who can't upgrade to 7.4 for whatever reason can still
> get some features / improvements.

I don't think there's a need for a formalized "7.3 maintainer" -- if
individuals would like to see particular fixes backported to 7.3, they
can read pgsql-patches and post backported patches themselves. If
someone wants to go ahead and do that, I wouldn't complain. (Similarly,
if there is enough demand for a commercial company to do something
similar for their customers, that might also be a good idea).

However, I think it's a bad idea to backport any features into older
releases. The reason 7.3.x is really stable is precisely that it has had
a lot of testing and bugfixing work done, but no new features.
Furthermore, adding more features to 7.3.x reduces the incentive to
upgrade to 7.4, worsening the support problem: the more people using old
releases, the more demand there will be for backported features, leading
to more people using 7.3, leading to more demand for ...

(FWIW, I think that any energy we might spend on a 7.3 maintainer would
be better directed at improving the upgrade story...)

-Neil