Still Support for Apache Subversion 1.6.16?

["Edwards, Angela CIV NAVAIR PAXR" <an...@navy.mil>]

To Whom This May Concern:

I'm a technical writer for the US Navy.  The Navy's policy is to assign an expiration date to all software applications in its purview.  The expiration for Apache Subversion 1.6.16 is March 31, 2012.  We can have this date extended if Apache continues to support (mainly in the form of technical support and security patches) this version of Apache Subversion.

Does Apache continue to offer this support for its Apache Subversion 1.6.16?

Please call, if necessary.

I look forward to your response.

Best Regards,

Angela Edwards
Technical Writer
(301)757-3377
Building 2360, PSEF
PAX River, MD 20670
Angela.Edwards2.ctr@navy.mil

"This signature line and my digital signature is the equivalent of a hard copy signature, serving to authenticate that I have the authority to send this e-mail and to indicate I have consciously decided that it should have the same legal authority normally accorded to an actual hard copy signature."

Re: Still Support for Apache Subversion 1.6.16?

[Ryan Schmidt <su...@ryandesign.com>]

On Feb 7, 2012, at 08:07, Edwards, Angela CIV NAVAIR PAXR wrote:

> I'm a technical writer for the US Navy.  The Navy's policy is to assign an expiration date to all software applications in its purview.  The expiration for Apache Subversion 1.6.16 is March 31, 2012.  We can have this date extended if Apache continues to support (mainly in the form of technical support and security patches) this version of Apache Subversion.
> 
> Does Apache continue to offer this support for its Apache Subversion 1.6.16?

The Subversion project's policy has been to support the current version (currently 1.7.x) and the previous version (1.6.x), where "support" means if you ask a question about it here on this mailing list, we will try to help you with it (but with no guarantee of success -- it's free software, after all). You can see lifecycle statement here:

http://subversion.apache.org/docs/release-notes/#supported-versions

If this policy continues, as I expect it to, support for Subversion 1.6.x will cease when Subversion 1.8.0 is released. There is no ETA for when that might be.

This does not mean that Subversion 1.6.x will cease to function at that time. It just means that if you ask a question here on this mailing list about that version, we may first ask you to upgrade.

Re: Still Support for Apache Subversion 1.6.16?

[Nico Kadel-Garcia <nk...@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 9:07 AM, Edwards, Angela CIV NAVAIR PAXR
<an...@navy.mil> wrote:
> To Whom This May Concern:
>
> I'm a technical writer for the US Navy.  The Navy's policy is to assign an expiration date to all software applications in its purview.  The expiration for Apache Subversion 1.6.16 is March 31, 2012.  We can have this date extended if Apache continues to support (mainly in the form of technical support and security patches) this version of Apache Subversion.

Good morning:

I'm an open source developer in general, not a Subversion primary
contributor nor a member of the Apache board.

But you *do* realize that Apache is a hosting site for numerous open
source tools, including Subversion, and does not actually maintain the
individual projects? It's thus nearlyy impossible for them to make any
end-of-life guarantee for support on particular software releases for
individual projects. If you need enterprise or military grade
officiaal support, you might consider talking to Wandisco, who provide
business support for Subversion, or your operating system vendor.

Subversion 1.6.17 has been released, so 1.6.16 can be reasonably
considered obsolete. Some operating system vendors, such as Red Hat,
publish and support Subversion 1.6.11 and will backport security
patches as they deem appropriate and necessary for their operating
systems. So you can expect Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 to remain
on that stable release version until forced to upgrade with a large
stick and severe battering from their clients. in order to obtain new
features.

There is also no one Subversion distribution for all operating
systems, since mahy older systems simply lack the libraries and
components needed to compile the newer versions.  No one has published
anything for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 more recent than Subversion
1.4.6: too many dependencies on newer software, not even me, and I've
been publishing patches for RHEL compatible releases for a while now.

> Does Apache continue to offer this support for its Apache Subversion 1.6.16?

See above. If the Navy cared to fund Apache, for Subversion and httpd
and all the other cool projects they host, I bet it would help them
support the main open source repositories and be much appreciated and
help improve the overall availability of these open source tools. Such
high quality tools do need support.

> Please call, if necessary.
>
> I look forward to your response.

Welcome to the world of open source and freeware, and good luck
setting such guidelines. I do encourage you to look at vendor support
for such a critical resource. The security implicatoins of source code
management might themselves justify bringing in vendor support.

                                           Nico Kadel-Garcia <nk...@gmail.com>

> Best Regards,
>
> Angela Edwards
> Technical Writer
> (301)757-3377
> Building 2360, PSEF
> PAX River, MD 20670
> Angela.Edwards2.ctr@navy.mil
>
> "This signature line and my digital signature is the equivalent of a hard copy signature, serving to authenticate that I have the authority to send this e-mail and to indicate I have consciously decided that it should have the same legal authority normally accorded to an actual hard copy signature."
>