OpenSSL Communities
Thu 23 Jan 2025 8:12AM

LTS releases

KR Kurt Roeckx Public Seen by 24

There have been discussions about doing an LTS release every 2 year, but I currently can't find a reference. The current policy requires a new one before september the 7th.

So will the policy be changed?

Will 3.5 become an LTS?

The next release of Debian will probably ship with 3.5.

Kurt

MC

Matt Caswell Thu 23 Jan 2025 12:21PM

The next LTS release has yet to be formally announced. September 7th is before our next release after 3.5 (which will be in October). Therefore, IMO, 3.5 is very likely be announced as the LTS.

The LTS policy is also likely to change IMO, but it hasn't been discussed for a while.

KR

Kurt Roeckx Fri 21 Feb 2025 3:04PM

So the blog today confirmed 3.5 as LTS, and an LTS release every 2 years.

TH

Tim Hudson Fri 21 Feb 2025 8:28PM

Correct - see https://openssl-library.org/post/2025-02-20-openssl-3.5-lts/ and there is also the roadmap update it references at https://openssl-library.org/roadmap/index.html (which has a slight inconsistency I'll get corrected).

The non-LTS releases are now supported for 13 months (a 1 month overlap to allow users to change between the release two releases after the one expiring) rather than the previous 2 years.

And the planned release dates are also included. Noting that for OpenSSL-3.6 the release date is 1st October 2025 allowing for the OpenSSL Conference being the next week and wanting to get the release out before the conference. Typically we aim for within the first week but on a Tuesday. All dates/times are in the EU time zone.

It allows for some slippage if the release testing reports issues that have to be handled and still being able to stay within the designated month for the release.