The three phases of product support

[marcwrobel]

I was thinking yesterday about #2700 (comment) and its integration in the API v1 (#2080) I came to the conclusion there are in fact 3 consecutive support phases (discontinued and LTS phases are separate and overlap those three phases). Those phases have different meaning depending on a given product support policy, but usually it comes to :

• Active support (bug fixes, security fixes, and eventually minor features). This is currently either documented in the activeSupportColumn or eolColumn,
• Limited support (important bug fixes and security fixes). This is currently always documented in the eolColumn, when applicable.
• Extended support (usually commercial or subject to conditions). This is currently always documented in the extendedSupportColumn.

All those phases are optional and can be used simultaneously, but a product should use at least one of the active or limited support phase. The EOL date is either the end of the active support phase (if there is no limited support) or the end of the limited support phase.

As you can see the level of support offered using the eolColumn is not clear, and this is currently "fixed" by modifying the column label. Shouldn't we switch to the active / limited / extended support model and replace the eolColumn with a limitedSupportColumn (this would require some adaptations for a lot of products) ?