What does this mean to the Pi?
I'll get my coat
hey most of my boxes are still running 2.6
Version 3.14 of the Linux kernel is no longer being supported. Kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman took to the Linux Kernel Mailing List with the following: NOTE - the 3.14.y kernel series is now end-of-life. It will not be receiving any more updates and should no longer be used at all. Please use 4.4 if you want a LTS …
Ver Maintainer Released Projected EOL
4.4 Greg Kroah-Hartman 2016-01-10 Feb, 2018
4.1 Sasha Levin 2015-06-21 Sep, 2017
3.18 Sasha Levin 2014-12-07 Jan, 2017
3.16 Ben Hutchings 2014-08-03 Apr, 2020
3.12 Jiri Slaby 2013-11-03 Jan, 2017
3.10 Willy Tarreau 2013-06-30 Oct, 2017
3.4 Li Zefan 2012-05-20 Sep, 2016
3.2 Ben Hutchings 2012-01-04 May, 2018
I guess that the sort of government projects you're talking about are unlikely to be running a raw Linux kernel, so these dates aren't likely to be of any interest to them. They're more likely to be running one of the well known distributions who'll continue to support things for much much longer. RHEL has a 10 year support life.
I know HP used to still show part numbers active for a couple of generations back worth of HW to cope with these issues. The end customers used to complain like mad that they could never buy the latest HW because any attempt to modify an order for the new version would put them back to the start of a multi-year buying procedure.