TYPO3 CMS Agenda: More long-term support

Categories: Development Created by Michael Stucki
In a year from now, TYPO3 4.5 LTS was originally planned to reach end of life. The TYPO3 Core Team is pleased to announce the schedule for the upcoming TYPO3 releases including the next release with Long Term Support (LTS). Additionally, the lifetime of TYPO3 4.5 LTS will be extended.
As the end of life of TYPO3 4.5 LTS is getting closer, the TYPO3 Core Team has discussed the agenda for the upcoming releases. After an intensive discussion, two main goals have been identified:

New versions are to be released in a 6-month-release cycle

  • it is a great way to reflect the activity of TYPO3 CMS
  • it reflects the activity in our product
  • it is a good compromise between stability and new features

Long Term Support versions are released on a regular base

  • there is a high demand for both, bleeding-edge features and long-term commitment
  • there is a need for new LTS versions on a regular base
  • there needs to be a reasonable amount of time to migrate from one LTS version to the next

TYPO3 CMS 6.2 LTS

As a result of this, TYPO3 CMS 6.2 LTS has been added to the roadmap. It will be the next version with Long Term Support. TYPO3 CMS 6.2 LTS is scheduled for October 2013 and will provide maintenance updates for 3 years until October 2016. Besides this, releases will continue to be published on a half-yearly base. TYPO3 CMS 6.1 is the next release and is scheduled for April 2013.

Maintenance period

The maintenance period of 18 months (36 months for LTS releases) is clearly defined. It separates between two types of issues:
  • Regular bugfixes:
    All known and patched bugs are fixed during the first 6 months (until the next stable version will be released).
  • Priority bugfixes & security bugfixes:
    All security patches, as well as priority bugfixes (blockers) will be provided for 12 more months.
  • Other bugs are fixed only at the discretion of contributors and upon decision by the Release Manager.
Every two years, a version having Long Term Support (LTS) is released. It is supported for 3 years (12 months having all bugs fixed, 24 months having security and priority bugfixes applied). LTS versions overlap for 1 year which gives users enough time for migration.

Prolonged support for TYPO3 4.5 LTS

In order to provide a reasonable amount of time for migrating from TYPO3 4.5 LTS to TYPO3 CMS 6.2 LTS, the team decided to extend the support lifetime of TYPO3 4.5 LTS for 6 months until October 2014. By this, users will have one year time to migrate projects to the next LTS version.

Agenda

The updated release agenda shows the scheduled release dates and the maintenance lifetime of the upcoming TYPO3 releases: <link http: typo3.org fileadmin t3org documents typo3_release_agenda_lts.pdf _blank>