nuke cygwin legacy?

[Erwin Waterlander]

Christopher Faylor schreef, Op 5-2-2013 19:00:
> On Tue, Feb 05, 2013 at 06:49:25PM +0100, Thomas Wolff wrote:
>> Am 05.02.2013 18:41, schrieb Christopher Faylor:
>>> Corinna +1'ed my suggestion that it was time to remove cygwin 1.5
>>> support so I'm wondering if anyone has any objections to removing
>>> 1.5 from cygwin.com.
>>>
>>> I was going to suggest this a few months ago and mention that the Cygwin
>>> Time Machine was an alternative but it looks like that service is no
>>> longer available.
>>>
>>> So, as an alternative, we could advertise that the directory is going
>>> away on the main web page for a month before nuking it.
>> I had thought that support had stopped anyway, just keeping the files
>> available.
> The Cygwin 1.5 support was for setup.exe.  We could just stop releasing
> new versions of setup.exe for 1.5 but that isn't really completely
> viable since we occasionally have to fix security violations.  Maintaining
> legacy support in the current setup sources is a pain so we should get
> rid of it.
>
>> I used to run an old laptop with Windows ME until recently and maybe
>> there's an ME or Windows 2000 surviving in some virtual machine...
>> For owners of old hardware, there is also some Linux installations still
>> available that fit into something like 20MB, so why not keep cygwin for
>> download?
> Because it is taking space on the web site and on sourceware.org and
> there is no good reason for it to be offered anymore.  If there are
> virtual machines running ME then, if they haven't installed Cygwin 1.5
> by now, there is no reason to assume that they will need it.

There is no reason to assume they don't need it...

>
> Additionally, except for setup.exe, there have been no bug fixes or
> security fixes in 1.5 so we're offering buggy, insecure software on our
> site.

It doesn't matter that it is not secure. Some people want to take the 
risk, and there is no warranty anyway. Just keep it for download.

regards,

-- 
Erwin Waterlander
http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/