Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v5 1/2 (for 2.10)] docs: document support lifetime for features

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 24/07/2017 16:47, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> If it takes more work downstream to undelete & maintain machine
> types in the downstream fork, that means downstream maintainers
> less free time to improve QEMU upstream. From that POV, deleting
> machine types & props upstream is actually counterproductive to
> upstream on balance. The rational thing would thus be to stick
> with status quo, and explicitly cdeclare that upstream will *never*
> delete machine types, or make their lifetime long enough for the
> longest lived downstream (10 years min & by the time we get to
> 10 years, it might even be 15 years). 

Yeah, that makes sense.  At the moment at least Red Hat and Canonical
create custom machine types.  As soon as neither Red Hat nor Canonical
contribute to upstream QEMU, the policy can change.  But honestly, even
though I have an obvious conflict of interest, I see no reason to make
things more complicated for downstreams that are active contributors to
QEMU...

Paolo