FreeBSD Aiming For More Predictable & Frequent Releases

Colin Percival who took over as the release engineering lead for FreeBSD last November has come up with two important changes for this BSD operating system's release engineering process.

FreeBSD is reducing the amount of time they support a stable branch from five years to four years. FreeBSD 15 and later will see just a four year support window rather than five to ease the maintenance burden with maintainers.

The other important change is putting out a more predictable schedule of FreeBSD releases. A minor release from one of the supported FreeBSD stable branches will now happen most quarters.

Percival has worked through improvements with the release engineering team to cut down on the number of release candidates needed to help streamline the process. The team has the capacity to put out a release every three months and to track for a new ".0" release every two years.

The plan for FreeBSD moving forward is now:

        Release    EoL
13.3:   Mar 2024   Dec 2024
14.1:   Jun 2024   Mar 2025
13.4:   Sep 2024   Jun 2025
14.2:   Dec 2024   Sep 2025
13.5:   Mar 2025   Apr 2026*
14.3:   Jun 2025   Jun 2026
15.0:   Dec 2025   Sep 2026
14.4:   Mar 2026   Dec 2026
15.1:   Jun 2026   Mar 2027
14.5:   Sep 2026   Jun 2027
15.2:   Dec 2026   Sep 2027
14.6:   Mar 2027   Nov 2028*
15.3:   Jun 2027   Jun 2028
16.0:   Dec 2027   Sep 2028
15.4:   Mar 2028   Dec 2028
16.1:   Jun 2028   Mar 2029
15.5:   Sep 2028   Jun 2029
16.2:   Dec 2028   Sep 2029
15.6:   Mar 2029   Dec 2029
16.3:   Jun 2029   Jun 2030
17.0:   Dec 2029   Sep 2030

More details on the FreeBSD release process update via this mailing list post.