Support a given active release branch for 3 years.

[Joseph Myers]

On Tue, 31 Mar 2020, Carlos O'Donell via Libc-alpha wrote:

> An open glibc release branch will be considered active for 3 years 
> after the branch opens, at which point the branch is EOL. A 
> non-active branch is not considered for bug or CVE backports. 
> This doesn't mean the backports are carried out, that may depend on 
> resources and interest, but it is considered, for example when 
> deciding if the bug can be closed. Anyone with commit privileges 
> can always backport patches from the master branch to any stable 
> branch, even a closed one, so long as they meet the rules to do so.

I'm not convinced there's a meaningful distinction being made here between 
open and closed branches.  Backports might be carried out to closed 
branches, while it's quite possible no-one is actually interested in 
carrying out some backport for an open branch, so both kinds of branches 
might or might not get backports depending on interest.  Bugs are closed 
when fixed on master, regardless of whether fixed on release branches; the 
use of list-fixed-bugs.py to list bugs fixed in a new release relies on 
that.  So there is no distinction regarding whether bugs are closed 
either.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com