-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Dear suse-security-announce subscriber and SuSE Linux user, With the release of the SuSE Linux 8.2 i386 ftp version, we announce that the SuSE Linux 7.1 distribution will be discontinued for all architectures. Our SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) products and the products based on SLES are not affected by this announcement. Vulnerabilities found after Friday, May 16 2002, will not be fixed for SuSE Linux 7.1 any more. After two years of successful use, SuSE Linux 7.1 will free resources for the newly released products. By consequence, the 7.1 distribution directories on our ftp server ftp.suse.com have been moved to the /pub/suse/discontinued/ directory tree structure; the 7.1 directories in the update trees will follow near the end of May, soon after all pending update packages have been published. SuSE puts much effort into adding security improvements (patches) to the software. We usually do not publish new versions of a software package because new features and changed behaviour of a single package can jeopardize the seamless operation of the product as a whole. Over the lifetime of a SuSE Linux distribution, this causes an increasing workload on the SuSE Security Team and SuSE software engineering in general: The older the product (and the package versions in it) is, the more work is needed to prepare patches that fix security related malfunctions. This forces us to focus on the SuSE Linux distributions of a newer release date to ensure that our customers can continuously take advantage of the quality that they are used to with SuSE products. Please note that our SuSE Linux Enterprise Server products have a longer support lifetime which is completely independent from the SuSE Linux distributions. To learn more about the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server product family, please visit http://www.suse.de/en/business/products/index.html . As usual, SuSE will continue to provide update packages for the remaining distributions SuSE-7.2 SuSE-7.3 SuSE-8.0 SuSE-8.1 and SuSE-8.2 for a two-year period after the release of the respective distribution. If you have any questions regarding this announcement, please do not hesitate to direct your questions to security@suse.de (SuSE security contact). Regards, Roman Drahtmüller, SuSE Security. - - | Roman Drahtmüller <draht@suse.de> // "You don't need eyes to see, | SuSE Linux AG - Security Phone: // you need vision!" | Nürnberg, Germany +49-911-740530 // Maxi Jazz, Faithless | - - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iQEVAwUBPr+qfXey5gA9JdPZAQEAygf+KEI9PrsUt9jqjV4qGYDI2LfMzEswGaTg VfjuJoy9bg+/6LZMk7FSdO3R19ndhNw/C5vXGIad2ta2xgdOuVit9I2POQ6gn7z+ ufUeNBPHI2u0Iv+aDTVemfyjrtwRdWrbL1ygBMr0PxnnowjRmXruK9Q+IGwaJkjo ZjFvK76GER0LkQKfijNr6XvjliFGAqESEAASrzrP8IQwYURjFoBRqze2+T+kUKgo 2pUa5t+WecxqZG7I9hgOti/9sQAuwfMN7uaONVEt6BdIsJki3zL5erPTQjoiprlD kExFoCEydhlL/xjcrEo0PJsPXKH/evxbrQjfcOqQrfsTmJlirCAj4Q== =e7cv -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----