Open SSH End-of-Life Schedule?

[hvjunk]

Q: What type of changes, "incompatibilities" do you see, or experience, that would require something like that?

Tomcat: i't s a "platform" where newer technologies (ie. JDK version N+3) could introduce unexpected problems for business apps that runs on that platform to have security for a period.

Postgresql: as new features (ie. logical replication, and partitioning) requires base fileformat type changes and some wire protocol changes, there you'd want some stability for businesses to not backup-restore every couple of months.

Ansibe-core: yeah THAT is a fun one, having gotten bitten a couple of times over the years with older playbooks/roles not working on newer Python etc. Yes, I want/need indications on how long and which systems I'll have to redo and which I should not upgrade to keep the lights on.

OpenSSL/GnuTLS/LibreSSL: as newer portocols are introduces, and old protocols shown to be weak etc., you will have incompatibilities with applications with "major" version changes, and thus you want the minor versions to be running as long as possible with security patches when required, but at least the apps that (dynamically?) link to it will continue working.


OpenSSH: well... the only "incompatibilities" I've encountered, was when I needed to connect to older environments with (suspect) versions, when the newer OpenSSH already "deprecated by default" the problematic algorithms, otherwise I'm more in need of the versions with the security patches done right.

What I guess the OP "wants" is to say that version 9.5  will be supported for the next 3-5 years, and all the security patches be backported from versions 11,12,13,14,15 to 9.5.3-patch1234 etc. Since OpenSSH/etc. haven't changed the wire protocol in like 20odd years, I don't personally see a reason to require such, given the RFC standards for the protocol, given the number of competitors out there.

That said,perhaps the OpenSSH devs could state something like this to clear the "EOL" problem easily: the latest version will be the version we'll patch for security, any version before that we deemed EOL and won't support and ask you to first upgrade and test before making the bug submission.

 

> On 13 Oct 2023, at 19:10, Jeremy Guthrie <Jeremy.Guthrie at cdw.com> wrote:
> 
> Sorry, I should have been more clear.  Just wondering in general if there is a policy, not as any kind of library.  Below are more examples from that website of tools, servers and services.  It’s possible there still isn’t a timeframe but wondering about general end-of-life expectations even if there have been only cursory discussions.
> 
> https://endoflife.date/ansible-core
> https://endoflife.date/tomcat
> https://endoflife.date/postgresql
> 
> Example PostgreSQL Versioning policy:
> https://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning/
> "The PostgreSQL Global Development Group supports a major version for 5 years after its initial release. After its five year anniversary, a major version will have one last minor release containing any fixes and will be considered end-of-life (EOL) and no longer supported."
> 
>> On Oct 12, 2023, at 10:53 PM, Damien Miller <djm at mindrot.org> wrote:
>> 
>> EXTERNAL EMAIL
>> 
>> On Tue, 10 Oct 2023, Jeremy Guthrie wrote:
>> 
>>> Is there any kind of published end-of-life schedule/expectations the OpenSSH community maintains that could be reflected on a site like of https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://endoflife.date/__;!!HUqgN_M!p3EDk0gRs5gn7cKVhvaGi0EPp_iDoEN1rx4RZWA-SlQIvZKlOTjUH34xZLDNKT2lbH-sL9QA3qC03-4$
>>> Example of OpenSSL:  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://endoflife.date/openssl__;!!HUqgN_M!p3EDk0gRs5gn7cKVhvaGi0EPp_iDoEN1rx4RZWA-SlQIvZKlOTjUH34xZLDNKT2lbH-sL9QA-tunzHw$
>> 
>> No. We don't ship a library, so the situation is different.
> 
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