[stunnel-users] Life cycle information

[Ben Harper]

On 02/01/2017 03:58 AM, Małgorzata Olszówka wrote:
> W dniu 30.01.2017 o 16:02, Ben Harper pisze:
>> I am trying to confirm some life cycle information, mainly supported
>> version(s) and what versions do not insure backwards compatibility.
>>
>> It would appear that only the latest version is supported, per the first
>> item under 'Before you send your question to stunnel-users' on the
>> Mailing Lists page[0].
>>
>> Does this project use semantic versioning?  Will incompatibilities only
>> come when a 6.x.x version is released?  It seems at one point this was
>> the case per the 'Upgrading to stunnel 4' link on the Documentation
>> page[1].
>>
>
> Hello,
> stunnel is free software (as in "free speech"), but it does not come
> with free services.  Technical support is not an exception.  The purpose
> of the stunnel-users mailing list is for the users to help each other
> with the latest version of stunnel.
>
> Commercial support is also available for older versions if needed.
>
> Regards.

Hey Małgorzata,

Thanks for the reply.  Let me clarify my questions.

Some applications will offer bug fixes and security updates for multiple 
versions, like Python (2.7, 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6) or MariaDB (5.5, 10.0 and 
10.1).  While others will only do this for the a single release, like 
git or vim.  Should I except that stunnel will only provide bug fixes 
and security updates for the latest publicly available tarball?

Along those lines, software versioning varies greatly and different 
projects introduce incompatibilities differently.  Would it be safe to 
say that all versions within the 5.x series would not have intention 
incompatibilities?

Having life cycle information to guide myself and other users on when 
and how to patch is important, especially for security software.

-Ben