The official end of life for Apache 2.2 was January 1, 2018 (see Apache home page):
Apache httpd 2.2 End-of-Life 2018-01-01
As previously announced, the Apache HTTP Server Project has
discontinued all development and patch review of the 2.2.x series of
releases.
The Apache HTTP Server Project had long committed to provide
maintenance releases of the 2.2.x flavor through June of 2017. The
final release 2.2.34 was published in July 2017, and no further
evaluation of bug reports or security risks will be considered or
published for 2.2.x releases.
The first official announcement was July 5, 2016.
This is for all our 2.2 users, your time is running out.
With today's announcement of Apache 2.4.23 the Apache Software
Foundation included the timetable agreed upon last month for Apache
2.2's end-of-life (EOL).
So Apache 2.2 will no longer receive any new releases after June 30,
2017. I would expect one last release at that time. Apache 2.2 will EOL completely on December 31, 2017 and there will not be any
maintenance after that date.
Some Background
The developers of the Apache HTTP Server are almost entirely
volunteers that devote some of their free time maintaining the
software. Because of this, they are free to choose what they want to
devote this time on and for most that is mainly maintaining the 2.4
code base, new features or enhancements as well as 2.6/3.0 or simply
2.next as I like to call it. This results in the problem that not enough developers either can or are willing to spend time reviewing
bug fixes or release candidates of 2.2 and it takes 3 developers to
review and OK any such changes or releases. So if you cannot get three
people to review and vote, why bother with maintaining it at all?
A good example of this is Apache 2.2.32 which was scheduled to be
released at the same time as 2.4.23. There are two bug fixes that have
been sitting there for awhile that need reviewing and given the OK to
proceed but are still 1 vote short. This past weekend being a holiday
weekend in the states didn't help matters any but with the holiday
over and 2.4.23 out the door, this will hopefully happen in the next
couple days for a release sometime next week.
The first time a vote came up to EOL 2.2 was in May of 2015. This was
postponed to November 2015 because at that time there was not a very
good 2.4 adoption rate due to the fact that many maintained Linux
versions/distros still included Apache 2.2 and would not get updated
to 2.4. These versions/distros have finally gone EOL themselves but
for a few. This postponed vote finally came last month and pre-vote
polling of those willing to contribute to 2.2 chose the timetable.
Looking at the results of that poll, I only see two developers willing
to maintain/review bug/security fixes and two willing to test and vote
for new releases out to June 2017, it looks as the rest are only
willing to go to the end of this year so after that things may get
sketchy if 3 votes cannot be obtained and basically EOLing 2.2 before
the end 2017.
