On 27/06/2014 23:45, Lamar Owen wrote:
> On 06/27/2014 06:29 PM, Mark Rousell wrote:
>> And yet it most certainly *has* taken on a new form. That changes
>> things. The threads about it on this mail list would not exist if
>> there had not been such a substantive, real world, change.
> On February 29, 2012, CentOS and SL both stopped support for version 4
> of their respective distributions.  However, Red Hat still has Extended
> Lifecycle Support for RHEL4 until February 28, 2015.  Where are those
> SRPMS?  Subscribers to the Extended Support can get them, but they're
> not publicly available, and never have been to the best of my
> knowledge.  RHEL3 was supported by the EUS mechanism until January of
> 2014, yet CentOS 3 went out of support October 31, 2010 (can't rebuild
> if there's no public source from which to rebuild). That's a period of
> over three years where subscribers could get packages and SRPMS that
> were not available to the public.
> 
> Again, this is not a new issue in general; it's just now impacting more
> people than before who are surprised by something that's been around for
> a long time.

Yup, I do take your point. Nevertheless, I still cannot help but observe
that:

a) It's a new issue in the specific context in which it matters here (as
I said, if it wasn't a new issue in this context then there would not be
the problem that is at hand),

b) the comments by Bradley Kuhn and others back in 2011 do not fully
apply to the situation at hand now (even though it is a longstanding
issue in general), and

c) as I said in my message posted at 23:41:46 +0100, just because it is
a longstanding issue that is increasingly common practice does not mean
that it is acceptable or that it will necessarily stand if well
challenged. It is all too easy for people to become inured to issues
like these and think that they are an inevitability or fully legal just
because there has been no real challenge to them, just because they are
there. Historical lack of action does not necessarily legitimise,
justify or explain current or future lack of action. Opinions can and do
change.