End of Maintenance for ISC DHCP CLIENT and RELAY

Victoria Risk <[email protected]> Fri, 18 Jun 2021 11:53:29 -0700
Newsgroups gmane.network.dhcp.isc.announce
Message-ID <[email protected]>
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Greetings ISC DHCP Users -

ISC would like to end maintenance of the ISC DHCP *client and relay* by =
the end of 2021.  We plan to continue maintaining the DHCP *server*, and =
any code that is common between the server, client and relay for a =
couple more years at least.  Our January 2020 release of ISC DHCP =
incorporated a number of submitted patches, mostly for the client, but =
otherwise we have done little maintenance on the client or relay.  To be =
honest, the client and relay have simply not been a focus of ours for =
several years.  As a small non-profit organization, we have to allocate =
our limited resources carefully and we think the ISC DHCP server, and =
Kea have more future value for users. =20

We emailed a couple of dozen people who contributed to the maintenance =
of the ISC DHCP client and relay in the past few years to see if there =
was anyone interested in volunteering to take over maintenance. We got a =
single reply, from someone who is maintainer for the client in an =
operating system. This reinforced our thinking that perhaps no one needs =
the ISC distribution of the client or relay any longer.=20

Why are we doing this?
The ISC DHCP code is extremely mature, and is not designed for =
unit-testability. The test coverage is just not good enough to inspire =
confidence that any change, even an apparently minor one, would not =
cause some unidentified breakage.=20

ISC has no support customers for either of these components, and we =
haven=E2=80=99t for at least a decade, so there is no funding stream to =
support them.  We are not even sure whether anyone is even using the =
client or relay code from our distribution anymore. We think it is =
likely that some operating systems are maintaining DHC client or relay =
implementations or forks that are =E2=80=98better maintained=E2=80=99 =
and more modern than our current client or relay code.  =20

Feedback welcome
We welcome your comments, questions and suggestions.  We have maintained =
ISC DHCP for over 20 years, and it seems like it is time to archive the =
ISC DHC client and relay.  If you are aware of a well-maintained =
implementation of either a client or relay, and would like to suggest =
users switch to that alternative, please feel free to reply (to =
[email protected]) with that comment. =20

We would like to thank all the contributors who have sent us patches =
(mostly upstreaming client patches from operating system distributions) =
over the years.=20

Questions?

Vicky Risk
Product Manager


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<html><head><meta http-equiv=3D"Content-Type" content=3D"text/html; =
charset=3Dutf-8"></head><body style=3D"word-wrap: break-word; =
-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=3D""><pre =
style=3D"white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" =
class=3D""><font face=3D"Arial" class=3D"">Greetings ISC DHCP Users -

ISC would like to end maintenance of the ISC DHCP *client and relay* by =
the end of 2021.  We plan to continue maintaining the DHCP *server*, and =
any code that is common between the server, client and relay for a =
couple more years at least.  Our January 2020 release of ISC DHCP =
incorporated a number of submitted patches, mostly for the client, but =
otherwise we have done little maintenance on the client or relay.  To be =
honest, the client and relay have simply not been a focus of ours for =
several years.  As a small non-profit organization, we have to allocate =
our limited resources carefully and we think the ISC DHCP server, and =
Kea have more future value for users. =20

We emailed a couple of dozen people who contributed to the maintenance =
of the ISC DHCP client and relay in the past few years to see if there =
was anyone interested in volunteering to take over maintenance. We got a =
single reply, from someone who is maintainer for the client in an =
operating system. This reinforced our thinking that perhaps no one needs =
the ISC distribution of the client or relay any longer.=20

Why are we doing this?
The ISC DHCP code is extremely mature, and is not designed for =
unit-testability. The test coverage is just not good enough to inspire =
confidence that any change, even an apparently minor one, would not =
cause some unidentified breakage.=20

ISC has no support customers for either of these components, and we =
haven=E2=80=99t for at least a decade, so there is no funding stream to =
support them.  We are not even sure whether anyone is even using the =
client or relay code from our distribution anymore. We think it is =
likely that some operating systems are maintaining DHC client or relay =
implementations or forks that are =E2=80=98better maintained=E2=80=99 =
and more modern than our current client or relay code.  =20

Feedback welcome
We welcome your comments, questions and suggestions.  We have maintained =
ISC DHCP for over 20 years, and it seems like it is time to archive the =
ISC DHC client and relay.  If you are aware of a well-maintained =
implementation of either a client or relay, and would like to suggest =
users switch to that alternative, please feel free to reply (to <a =
href=3D"mailto:[email protected]" =
class=3D"">[email protected]</a>) with that comment. =20

We would like to thank all the contributors who have sent us patches =
(mostly upstreaming client patches from operating system distributions) =
over the years.=20

Questions?

Vicky Risk
Product Manager</font></pre><div class=3D""><br =
class=3D""></div></body></html>=

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