Drupal LTS

There is an announcement thread for D7 LTS that recently got a comment that seems to propose some changes for how D7 LTS is managed.

I'd like to split that discussion off of the issue on drupal.org and into the context of this group where it is more appropriate.

Joseph Olstad said:

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Tag1 Quo is a hosted security solution that keeps your Drupal 6 site up-to-date with the latest security patches for core as well as all contributed themes, and modules. Tag1 Quo provides you a single comprehensive viewpoint of your security that quickly allows you to understand vulnerabilities and take action to address them.

I've just started a group on linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Drupal-6-forever-long-term-7460995

Purpose:

For smaller businesses and non-profit organisations, migrating from Drupal 6 to 7 (or 8) would represent a significant investment, quite possibly with little or no tangible benefit. However, Drupal 6 will very soon be unmaintained, meaning no further security updates, bug fixes or enhancements. The same is likely to happen to third party modules.

Hey Everyone,

Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu, have started an Indiegogo crowd funding campaign for a highly innovative, leading edge technology phone called the Ubuntu Edge. Here's the link.

http://igg.me/at/ubuntuedge/x/3562668

It'll be a converged device that will act as a PC with Ubuntu OS when connected to a monitor/keyboard. It'll cost 830ドル dollars but there are still lower priced perks still available.

Exaltation of Larks is hosting a BoF (birds of a feather) discussion on long-term Drupal support (particularly for Drupal 6 sites when Drupal 8 comes out and bug fixes and security releases for Drupal 6 are discontinued).

Long Term Support is a topic that is near and dear to us and a number of our clients and this BoF is a followup to our earlier post, Drupal 6 End of Life When Drupal 8 is Released... Or Not.

We're also preparing an "LTS" version of Drupal 6 and have a lot more planned. Stay tuned to the DrupalCon BoF schedule and @LarksLA on Twitter for news of when this BoF gets scheduled.

At the Boston Drupal meetup that was at Acquia this month, several presentations were focused on "what's new in Drupal 8" from the view of several people who now work at Acquia. I loved it. There were other presentations, as well (including one of my own!), and I really enjoyed seeing the Boston Drupal group again after many months.

During the questions and answers part of the meetup, I asked Dries if he was considering naming a security maintainer for Drupal 6 when Drupal 8 is released. (In case you didn't know, support for Drupal 6 will be discontinued by the Drupal core and security teams. See the handbook page on backwards compatibility at https://drupal.org/node/65922 for more, including Dries' original statement on the subject in 2006.)

If this group is going to be useful, now is the time to get active and see about backporting the fixes that were just released for 7.x and 6.x.

Yesterday I was visiting a company with performance issues. I bumped into some corporate trouble.

As I only recently joined the company, decisions were made before my time. We are making a drupal 6 site. There are many reasons for this.

It was planned like that a long time ago
We need modules that aren’t/weren’t ported yet
The client agreed to that.

There is no way of moving to drupal 7 (yet).

According to the drupal requirements page http://drupal.org/requirements#php

Note that some contributed modules may not be compatible with PHP 5.3, ...

On d.o:
Drupal 6 LTS: https://drupal.org/project/d6lts
https://drupal.org/project/lts
https://drupal.org/security-team

external:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS
Typo3 with LTS: http://typo3.org/teams/core/resources/maintenance-policy/

Security advisories (and patches) for older versions of Drupal by OpenFlows
http://www.openflows.com/drupal/security

How do you plan to backport security fixes?

Will you just wait for the release of Drupal 6 and backport them?
Do you plan to offer a system and some method to promote people reporting vulnerabilities in Drupal 5 even if it is EOL?