Release Strategy Clarification

[Victoria Risk]

> On Apr 26, 2018, at 5:53 AM, Matthew Pounsett <matt at conundrum.com> wrote:
> 
> This is a question for ISC about the new BIND release plan which I thought might be a useful clarification for others as well.
> 
> I didn't notice this when the new plan was first presented in March, but the key text in the legend of the Example Release Plan[0] for the red blocks is "a release that is no longer supported."  This implies that 9.12 will go from being the most recent supported stable version of BIND to unsupported literally overnight.  It doesn't appear there is a period where 9.12 and 9.14 are both supported, as 9.12 approaches end of life.
> 
> Is this an oversight, where the legend text needs updating to "a release that is approaching end of life," or do we really all have to plan to do our upgrades on January 1st every year?

Hi Matt,

You have correctly interpreted the chart in the blog post, but you don’t have to update in January, just when there is a bug you need a fix for.  If that bug is a security bug, the red block means, we will issue a security patch even though we are no longer issuing regular maintenance on that branch. So, effectively there is a quarter, 3 months, of overlap.

We want to do much more frequent releases, with new branches every year. We can’t create more branches AND support all of them for years like we used to. We believe that if the delta from one version to another is smaller, because the releases are closer together, then if you are say, running 9.12.3, and you want a bug fix, and we put that bug fix into 9.14.0, that will not be a big leap to upgrade to that.

Not everyone wants to update every year though, and that is why we also have the Extended Support Version. We are committed to supporting 9.11.x through the end of 2021. That will allow people to stay on that branch for something like 5 years, which seems like plenty.  

It is true that you have to make a choice about whether to hang out with the ESV or follow the annual stable releases.

Vicky

> 
> Thanks,
>    Matt
> 
> 
> [0]: <https://www.isc.org/blogs/bind-release-strategy-updated/ <https://www.isc.org/blogs/bind-release-strategy-updated/>>
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Victoria Risk
Product Manager
Internet Systems Consortium
vicky at isc.org





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