Drupal 7: end-of-life in November 2021

Many agencies are trying to convince clients to upgrade their Drupal 7 sites by threatening with November 2021 end-of-life. Recently they just lost their case because the official support for D7 was extended to November 2022.

Drupal Security Team is doing the right thing. Withdrawing support and forcing upgrades is something proprietary software vendors do all the time. Open-source software "buyers" should be protected from these tactics.

The real problem is that those agencies were not able to come up with a better value proposition for an upgrade. They are proposing to rebuild complex platforms that took years to build just for the sake of rebuilding and because developers don't enjoy maintaining the older versions of the software. Not a very strong business case.

Instead, they should think about improving the client's products for the benefits of their users and customers.

What do you think? Is postponing the end-of-life for Drupal 7 a step back or a positive notion?

Comments

[Ben Sinclair]

I think it's a step back.

Withdrawing support and forcing upgrades is something proprietary software vendors do all the time.

Yes, it is. It's also not. Some proprietary products get support way past their original end-dates (like Windows XP, for instance).

Open-source software "buyers" should be protected from these tactics.
I disagree. Open source can be supported by anyone. There is usually less money and fewer resources behind it to support legacy systems - and Drupal 7 is the definition of "legacy".
Open source "buyers" have no inherent rights nor should they have any expectations. The developers can leave to go do something else at any time.

I think that supporting D7 for so long is like supporting XP for an extra decade. It's a waste of resources and it's encouraging people to stay on a platform which is really not up to par by today's standards.