[Product Removal Request] RHEL7

[Mab879]

Product to be removed:

RHEL 7

Reason for Product removal:

• Product End-Of-Maintenance is on 2024-06-30 according to Red Hat.

• Added: 2024-06-03 21:57 UTC Red Hat also stated that they no longer plan on updating RHEL 7 content after 2024-06-30, see the Red Blog for more details.

Last contributors for the respective product:

1. @Mab879
2. @marcusburghardt
3. @jan-cerny
4. @evgenyz
5. @vojtapolasek

Deadline to receive comments or objections:

2024-06-24 17:00 (UTC)

[GitYukari]

Strongly disagree. RHEL 7 is reaching end of maintenance but it is not end of life. The announcement you linked explains:

End of Maintenance (EOM) means that you will lose access to critical and important impact security advisories (RHSAs) and urgent priority bug fix advisories (RHBAs).
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 will reach end of maintenance on June 30, 2024, but it is not reaching End of Life.
End of Life (EOL) occurs when a product or service is discontinued. Organizations that use the product will have to migrate to a new solution to continue receiving full support, updates, and security fixes.
Additionally, CentOS Linux 7 will reach End of Life (EOL) on June 30, 2024. Users who migrate to Red Hat will convert their systems to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. From there, they can either upgrade to a newer version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or you can take advantage of Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS).

To align with that, it would be reasonable to remove CentOS, but not RHEL 7 until 2028 when the ELS ends according to: https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata#Life_Cycle_Dates

[Mab879]

I also should have linked this: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-enterprise-linux-7-end-compliance-content-june-30-2024

Red Hat is not planning on updating this content after 30 June 2024.

[marcusburghardt]

The existing profiles for RHEL7 are stable and will continue there as they are.
As stated here the compliance content won't receive updates after June 30, 2024.
Therefore, I don't see a reason to keep the product active in Upstream and their respective CI tests also consuming Upstream resources after this date. I support the product removal in Upstream after End-Of-Maintenance.

[vojtapolasek]

I think the blog post linked by @Mab879 explains it all. The content will not disappear from RHEL, it will just not be updated anymore.