Re: [Openvpn-users] Removing support for MacOS X 10.3 and earlier?

[Samuli S. <sa...@op...>]

> On 10/03/10 11:48, Samuli Seppänen wrote:
> [...snip...]
> >> Hey mattock,
> >> It is pretty normal to drop support for older osX versions, most
> apps do
> >> it.  I would say that nobody would be surprised by this move...
> just add a
> >> download for last version that supports older osX in the downloads
> page.
> >> Then even if there are still people using openvpn on old osX versions,
> >> they could still just download the old version, which they surely
> are used
> >> to doing by now.
> >>
> >> -krzee
> >>   
> > Jonathan (maintainer of Tunnelblick) confirmed that only a handful (if
> > any) using OpenVPN on 10.3. Tiger (10.4) is still in relatively wide
> > use, even though it does not seem to get any security fixes. In any
> > case, we'll be dropping "official" support for 10.3 in the next release.
> > It might very well work regardless of that. Having older OpenVPN
> > versions on the downloads page for old OS'es makes sense.
>
> The only problem I see with providing downloads of older versions which
> is no longer supported, is that they might contain security issues which
> newer supported releases have included.  But if you're running an OS
> which is no longer supported by the OS vendor, that is also a security
> issue.  So the user might not care.
>
> The question is, if we care? And how we care if people are using
> vulnerable OpenVPN versions actively?  Maybe we should add a disclaimer
> during start-up of OpenVPN screaming out loud that this version is no
> longer supported and might contain security issues.  This approach
> mainly makes sense on major versions, like v2.0.  Or just to make a
> clear statement on the download page of the different versions, what it
> means to run an unsupported version.
>
> Except for that, I agree, we should be able to retire support for older
> and expired OSes.  The world needs to move on.
>
>
> kind regards,
>
> David Sommerseth
>
Good point. I think a disclaimer on the download page is the best option
as it avoids touching the code itself. Alternatively we could only
provide downloads for supported versions, which makes warnings unnecessary.

-- 
Samuli Seppänen
Community Manager
OpenVPN Technologies, Inc

irc freenode net: mattock