Per https://endoflife.date/linux, support for 4.9 LTS ended 3 months ago on 7th Jan 2023. Current cilium versions also do not support it anymore. We should consider dropping support for the old kernel. This would mean:

• Dropping it from the CI matrix.
• Stop requiring getters for MapInfo and ProgramInfo fields which appeared before 4.14.

Maybe something else? I probably wouldn't change existing API, but future refactoring might introduce incompatibilities with 4.9. So I'd expect a slow decline of compatibility as time goes on.

Who of our users is still relying on 4.9? Are they willing to pitch in for the maintenance?