[wp-hackers] Wordpress 3.0, can we finally get a LTS version?

[Peter Westwood]

On 17 Jun 2010, at 22:12, Dan Gayle wrote:

> In Matt's release notes, he mentioned "We’re going to take a release cycle
> off to focus on all of the things around WordPress."
> 
> One of those things should be long term support for the huge amount of
> commercial web properties now using WP that are caught in the never-ending
> cycle of release-update.
> 
> I once again wish that Wordpress would adopt a two-pronged release strategy.
> Yes, go ahead and release the latest, greatest bleeding edge version as your
> main release. But please, PLEASE, start a long-term-support (LTS) branch.
> Backport all the security fixes and keep something stable for at least the
> previous release version.
> 
> As Wordpress gets bigger, more and more companies are using it. Companies
> that are using it for more than their personal blog. Companies that are
> using it as a CMS, as their primary website, or for countless other cases.
> Unlike if your personal blog goes down, having one of these sites go down
> can create havoc for an entire company's bottom line.
> 
> Having to continually update a website because of security enhancements
> isn't a big deal. Updating a website because of some cool new feature, a
> feature that can introduce new bugs and security flaws, shouldn't be
> mandatory.
> 
> I'm sorry for bringing this up again, and I'm sorry if you feel it's off
> topic, but you are the only developers who can make it happen.
> 

We tried this in the past with 2.0 and we found the following:

 * Actually very few people used it
 * Alot of the security improvements and fixes we made post 2.0 were not trivial and backporting them would have taken a lot of time and testing

I would happily support and maintain a LTS branch for WordPress if there was a community around that really wanted it.

This really means that if this is something you want and you have clients that want then please provide patches and help us reach the goal you aspire.

It needs to be a community effort it is not something we can do on our own - the time would be better spent supporting the millions of people who do upgrade.

Cheers
-- 
Peter Westwood
http://blog.ftwr.co.uk | http://westi.wordpress.com
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