[asterisk-users] How long will Asterisk 1.4.x supported/maintained

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Monday 17 November 2008 12:46:10 pm Philipp Kempgen wrote:
> Tilghman Lesher schrieb:
> > On Thursday 13 November 2008 08:16:42 Klaus Darilion wrote:
> >> Is there somewhere a statement from Digium how long they will support
> >> Asterisk 1.4?
> >
> > There is no statement, because we haven't even discussed when the EOL for
> > 1.4 will be reached.  Certainly that means it won't happen for at least
> > the next 60 days, but beyond that, I really don't know.
>
> For the average non-techie user who does not want to compile
> themselves that may sound funny (if not scary).
>
> When Debian Lenny (featuring Asterisk 1.4) is finally going to be
> released that version might not even be supported any more.

Do you have a firm release date for Debian Lenny?  I sure don't.  Do
you have a guarantee from Debian that Lenny will even be released?
No, you don't have that, either.  With a little bit of spin, you can make
Debian's release policy sound really, really awful.  That said, I'm sure
Debian will release Lenny "when it's ready", which is exactly the same
policy that we have for new Asterisk releases.  We release when it's
ready; doesn't sound so bad, now, does it?  Similarly, we will probably
end-of-life 1.4 when a majority of users make the jump to 1.6.  I can't
really say for sure, though, as again, that decision has not yet been
made.

> Does that indicate Debian (don't really know about other distros)
> is too slow?
> Does it mean the development goes "too fast"?
> Is it a problem with VoIP in general?
> Does it mean there is no point for a distro to provide VoIP
> packages because if you want roughly the version everybody else
> is using you will have to compile it anyway?

I'm in Engineering not Marketing, so I'm going to tell you the way it is, not
a fluff paragraph that means pretty much nothing.  I find it interesting that
dropped my qualifying statement in your reply, which was:

> > I think we will certainly invite input from the community before we decide
> > upon a firm date, however.  Keep in mind that Asterisk 1.2 is still
> > receiving security updates as they occur to the broader Asterisk
> > spectrum, so even though it's not receiving  bugfixes, it is still
> > somewhat supported, in that respect. 

-- 
Tilghman