BSDSec

deadsimple BSD Security Advisories and Announcements

Interim support guarantee for FreeBSD 12

Dear FreeBSD community,

The Core Team, in consultation with Release Engineering, the Security
Team, and Port Manager has decided that we need to reevaluate the 5-year
support of stable branches starting with stable/12.  A changed security
landscape, increased toolchain velocity, and shorter support windows for
our upstream components necessitate this reevaluation.

We will be leading discussions on updating our support model, with the
goal of making the model sustainable for the Project.  These
discussions, which will include opportunities for community feedback,
will be complete by March 31, 2019.

Regardless of the outcome of the discussions, we guarantee support for
the stable/12 branch for at least 18 months, or at least 6 months after
13.0 is released, whichever is later.  Again, these are minimum
durations for the stable/12 branch support and they will not be reduced.

After these discussions are complete, there will be a revised statement
about the stable/12 branch lifetime.

Release Engineering, the Security Team, Port Manager, and the Core Team