[asterisk-dev] Keeping the 1.4 branch open

[Kevin P. Fleming]

On 04/27/2011 02:13 PM, Olle E. Johansson wrote:

>> The transition to 'security fix only' for Asterisk 1.4 was already pushed back quite a bit to take into account Asterisk 1.8 being released later than planned, and all of these dates were published quite a long time ago, so this should not be a surprise to anyone.
> No, it's not a surprise. But we have no working replacement for 1.4. You are putting people in panic mode by shutting down support for 1.4.

That's a pretty strong statement; I hope you are not speaking for the 
entire Asterisk community when you refer to 'we have no working 
replacement for 1.4'. In fact lots and lots of users *are* using 
Asterisk 1.8, including a number I know personally.

If people are going into panic mode because they failed to prepare for 
1.4 going into 'security fix only' mode when it was announced quite a 
long time ago, there's not really much we (Digium) can do about that. 
There have to be deadlines, and they were announced a long time in 
advance, so that people could take whatever steps they needed to in 
order to be prepared. If we continually ask "are you all ready for us to 
stop maintaining 1.4?", the answer will always be 'no', and we'll get 
nowhere.

I too hope that there is a group of people out there who will take on 
the task of maintaining the 1.4 branch; in many cases, that will involve 
looking at issues fixed in the 1.8 branch and determining whether the 
same issue exists in 1.4 (and if so, backporting the patch), as Russell 
did long ago for the 1.0 branch after 1.2 was released. It's not a small 
task by any means, but it's not as if the 1.4 maintenance team would be 
required to analyze and resolve every problem on their own.

-- 
Kevin P. Fleming
Digium, Inc. | Director of Software Technologies
Jabber: kfleming at digium.com | SIP: kpfleming at digium.com | Skype: kpfleming
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
Check us out at www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org