Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2001 11:06:51 -0800 (PST) From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> To: Eric Harrison <Eric.Harrison@veritas.com> Cc: "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org> Subject: RE: FreeBSD Supported Releases Message-ID: <XFMail.010105110651.jhb@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <E157E02AD50CD41180EE00508B6A722D01D87CB6@mtvxch05.veritas.com>
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On 05-Jan-01 Eric Harrison wrote: > Hello, > I'm a product manager doing some research and wondering if there is a policy > or guideline that the FreeBDS board of directors/Community uses to gauge > release lifecycles. For example, how long will "community" energy be spent > to support older previous releases, over new. Basically how long will a > prior version be "supported". While this is a clear concept in commercial > software firms, don't yet understand how this works with FreeBSD and > community maintained OS. What I'm trying to ultimately decide is how long > we need to provide support for prior FreeBSD releases. > Thanks for your consideration, Best regards, > > Eric Harrison > -Product Manager, NetBackup > VERITAS Software, Inc. > Office: (650) 318-4766 > Mobile: (831) 234-7765 > mailto:eric.harrison@veritas.com You might want to always ensure that you spell it as FreeBSD and not FreeBDS as some people are overly sensitive about that. :) Unfortunately, there is not a firm written down guide that determines how long we support releases. When we feel that the newest -stable branch should be used by just about everyone we stop cutting releases on the previous -stable branch. For example, in between 4.1 and 4.2 we released the final 3.x release: 3.5. At this point in time, the 3.x branch will stay in maintenance mode for probably close to a year after the release of 3.5. This means no more releases, and no new functionality. Occasionally a bugfix might be backported, but few developers have 3.x boxes, so these are rare. When the 5.x branch is released and stabilizes, we will discontinue the 4.x branch, and it will go into maintenance mode for about a year after its final release, and the cycle will continue. I hope this helps. -- John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ PGP Key: http://www.baldwin.cx/~john/pgpkey.asc "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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