Why is Laravel ending support for older versions?

I want to understand the main reason for ending the support. Are there any security issues in the older versions because of which they don't want to continue or maybe a performance issue or bugs which they don't want to fix?

It's mainly because maintaining many different versions is a lot of work, for little benefit.

I'm not aware of any significant performance or security issues with older versions of Laravel. Of course, this may not be true forever, but it's probably going to be true for a long time.

What could be the disadvantages of keeping an older version?

Older versions are still available. It's just that they don't receive the same level of support.

The reason why I'm asking this is that my organization has most of the projects in the older versions and I'm not sure if I should upgrade them to the newer versions. I need a solid reason to upgrade them other than the obvious structural and architectural improvements.

If a project is still being actively developed, then it may be worth upgrading (I probably would, but I'm sure it depends on the project).

If your project is no longer being developed and is feature-locked, then it's probably not worth upgrading.

Thank you for your response. It was really helpful :)

Well think about this.

• PHP developers worked hard to maintain backwards compatibility.
• Java technology is several years backwards compatible.
• Asp.net technology is several years backwards compatible.
• ASP same

But yet php frameworks have to update every few months for some reason, not just laravel. So it's not the language, it's the framework developers.

Why is Laravel ending support for older versions?

Really isn't the question. Let's say you had a php application written in an older version, not too old. Then it would still work as is in php 7. It's because the frameworks try to put in so many specialized things for newbees that they don't know how to code the stuff for themselves. Like Auth. Mail, CSRF, etc.

So the specialized packages and things like that become outdated. The language itself would probably be good still, meaning php, and even basic javascript and css.

In fact I have one custom php framework several years old that just needed two tweaks in the router and a small tweak in the error handling to make it php 7.1 compatible.

That's not to say a older laravel application isn't good for a while yet.

In the long run you would be better off doing what large enterprise does. That is start working on your own custom framework. Most large enterprise have highly customized software they maintain in-house.

Or just don't worry about it and plan on updates more often, which I do not like and I don't do, with the exception of a security issue.

Thank you for your response. It was really helpful :)

Great, glad to help! :)