[ARIN-consult] EoL for Email Templates

[David Farmer]

To be honest, I can't really even imagine Email Templates 
going away.  But, I do have some sympathy for Mark and 
ARIN's developers, do they have to support Email as a API 
forever and ever?

So maybe we should think about about this simply as a 
product life cycle question.  I expect my product vendors to 
have a replacement product out an operating for some time 
before they announce the End-of-Life for the previous product.  
Lets say 1 year for sake of discussion.  Then, I normally expect 
the vendor to provide support for a product for 3 to 5 years 
following the announcement of the the End-of-Life. 

So, if ARIN were to fully have a new replacement for some 
Email Template released on 10/1/2009.  Then it might be 
reasonable to announce EOL for that template 10/1/2010, with 
support for the Template to cease on 10/1/2015.

If we think of Email Templates as a product that is 20 to 25 
years old, which was adapted from another product, a paper 
form, maybe 30 or more years old. (Although Paper forms are 
much older than that, they just weren't use for requesting 
Internet Resource until about 30 year ago or so).  

So, maybe it is not completely unreasonable to consider a EoL 
process for for Email Templates.  But, I wouldn't be thinking 
about making them go away until like 2015 or beyond.

What do others think of something like that?  This would at 
least give Mark and the developers a light at the end of the 
tunnel, all be it a long tunnel from their prospective.


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David Farmer                                      Email:farmer at umn.edu
Office of Information Technology
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