I thought it would be nice to specify the last day of support, because I
thought it'd seem more natural. But in practice this doesn't work well, because
such a truncated timestamp is usually taken to mean midnight that starts the
given date. I.e. 2011-12-13 is a shorthand for 2011-12-13 00:00:00 and not
2011-12-13 23:59:59.
999999999999. Let's instead specify that the given date is
the first unsupported day, which is meaningful for humans, and let the computer
treat it as midnight, which gives consistent interpratation.
<listitem><para>The date at which support for this version of the OS ends. (What exactly "lack of
support" means varies between vendors, but generally users should assume that updates, including
- security fixes, will not be provided.) The value is a date in the format
- <literal>YYYY-MM-DD</literal>, and specifies the last day on which support <emphasis>is</emphasis>
- provided.</para></listitem>
+ security fixes, will not be provided.) The value is a date in the ISO 8601 format
+ <literal>YYYY-MM-DD</literal>, and specifies the first day on which support <emphasis>is
+ not</emphasis> provided.</para>
+
+ <para>For example, <literal>SUPPORT_END=2001-01-01</literal> means that the system was supported
+ until the end of the last day of the previous millenium.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>