Joomla! institutes a new six month release cycle
It was just earlier this year that the CMS community was finally able to celebrate the release of the long awaited Joomla! 1.6. Most developers and web designers have been waiting a long time for many of the features that were included in this release. Much of the Joomla! community began the upgrade process immediately and others waited for the Joomla! team to work out many of the bugs or were waiting for updates to essential extensions or components before making the plunge into what would hopefully be the next evolution of Joomla!. No one was expecting that several months later Joomla! would announce that they are instituting a new six month release cycle. Wait...What!...
Joomla has recently informed the community that on or about the 10th of July, 2011 Joomla 1.7 will be released and more importantly on August 10th 1.6 will no longer be supported. If you're a developer or web designer or even a website owner you have got to be scratching your head or maybe even punching a wall right now. Many of these people spent a lot of time, money and resources upgrading to 1.6 and to find out that they will have to do that all over again in August leaving many to wonder why this new release cycle had to be instituted just after such a major release.
What is the new release cycle?
Every six months Joomla! will deliver a minor release. Each minor release will be supported one month after the release of the latest version. Every 12 months Joomla! will release what they call a LTS or Long Term Support version. This version will be supported for a period of 15 months or three months after each LTS version. 1.5 is considered an LTS release so it will be supported into 2012.
The current schedule is as follows:
- July 2011: 1.7 is available
- August 2011: 1.6 no longer supported
- January 2012: 1.8 (LTS) available
- February 2012: 1.7 no longer supported
- April 2012: 1.5 (LTS) no longer supported
What does this mean for current Joomla! users?
It means that 1.6 users will want to upgrade to 1.7 to ensure they receive proper security updates until the 1.8 release where they will have to upgrade again. 1.5 users who opted to wait a little longer to upgrade to 1.6 probably made the better choice as they will continue receiving the regular security updates and will only have to upgrade once in April of 2012. For more info read the Joomla! press release here: joomla-17-alpha-released
What Are your thoughts?
Do you think the new release cycle is a good idea or do you think it will result in a lack of support for the minor releases from the community. Personally I think its a good idea but they just picked a bad time to announce to every one that they were starting this. 1.6 should have been the next LTS because it was such a major release that has required complete overhauls for many developers and designers. Now that time and money has been spent they will have to do it all over again very soon (granted the upgrade process from 1.6 to 1.7 should not be as difficult as it was from 1.5 to 1.6).
