i-DOCS Output Management End-of-Life, End-of-Support Dates and Policy
We love all our products, but sometimes we must say goodbye to a release, so that we can continue moving forward on future development and innovation. Our End-of-Life / End-of-Support policy, defines how long a given release is considered supported (EoS), as well as how long a release is considered still in active development or maintenance (EoL). It should be noted that the present announcement replaces all previous EoL / EoS announcements and related policies.
Summary
The upshot is that we maintain each major release of our products for a period of thirty-six (36) months and we support it, for a period of forty-eight (48) months, following the General Availability (GA) date. Furthermore, we actively maintain the last minor release of the two (2) most recent major releases of i-DOCS Output Management along with its modules.
Type of releases
Major versions, such as 4.0.0, 5.0.0, 6.0.0, 7.0.0, 8.0.0, and 9.0.0 provide us with the opportunity to introduce major changes that may affect backward compatibility with regards to Core components and its modules. Minor versions, such as 8.1.0, 8.2.0, etc. provide us with the opportunity to introduce new features. Maintenance releases such as 8.1.1, 8.1.2, etc. are used for bug-fixing only. Maintenance activity occurs on all releases, but we focus on the last minor release stream i.e. 8.2.x, to define how long a specific code line, will be maintained. Active maintenance of a minor release implies that we are in the process of bug-fixing and backporting a number of fixes into that code branch.
Maintenance policy
Our goal – as of January 1st, 2022 – is to maintain the most recent minor release (i.e. 8.2.x, 9.3.x and so on) from the current and previous one, major release streams. However, in order to follow a smooth transition phase, we will exceptionally be maintaining 7.x.x releases, for one (1) more year, that is, until 31/12/2022.
The last minor release will be maintained, until the release of the second subsequent major version. As an example, i-DOCS 8.4.0 will be maintained until the GA release of i-DOCS OM 10.0.0. At the release of i-DOCS OM 10.0.0, we will continue to maintain the last 9.x.x series, and begin maintaining the 10.x.x series of minor releases. Sometimes, we might need to backport fixes to other minor release streams, such as a security bug, however this could only happen in a very rare case.
Maintenance table and roadmap
The following table along with the respective roadmap, depicts the above-mentioned policy:
