UCS Patchlevel Releases: Adjusting Release and Maintenance Times

In this blog article, I would like to inform you about important adjustments
to the release and maintenance times for UCS patch level releases. First of
all, I would like to give you a brief overview of how a maintenance cycle of
UCS works and which components are part of it.

A versioning of UCS is structured as follows:

• Major Release (e.g. 5. 0-3)
  Usually, a major release involves fundamental and comprehensive functional
  enhancements and changes, during which, for example, interfaces in our
  software may also change completely.

• Minor Release (e.g. 5. 0 -3)
  Minor release versions focus on product enhancements and bug fixes. Interfaces
  are usually only extended compatibly or adjusted in case of problems.

• Patchlevel Release (e.g. 5.0- 3 )
  We continuously provide improvements and bug fixes for minor problems using
  errata updates and summarize them in patchlevel releases. So far, we have
  published patchlevel releases at irregular intervals.

With regard to patch level releases, however, UCS users lacked predictability
and reliability in the operation of UCS. The maintenance period of a patch
level release expired six weeks after the release of the next patch level
release. Combined with the irregular release times, this made it difficult for
UCS customers to schedule and perform updates.

To provide our customers with better planning and longer response times, we
have decided to make two important adjustments to our releases. For one thing,
we will now be releasing patch level releases at regular three-month intervals
in the first half of the last month of each quarter - i.e. in the first halves
of March, June, September and December. For another thing, we are extending
the maintenance period for patch level releases for our enterprise customers:
They will receive updates until twelve weeks after the release of the
following patch level release. This extension allows our enterprise customers
to schedule the update with less time pressure.

---

Release	Release Date	Maintenance Period
5.0-3	02/08/2023	Until 12 weeks after the release of 5.0-4
(09/12/2023)
5.0-4	06/20/2023	Until 12 weeks after the release of 5.0-5
5.0-5	First half of September 2023	Until 12 weeks after the release of
5.0-6
5.0-6	First half of December 2023	Until 12 weeks after the release of
5.0-7
5.0-7	First half of March 2024	Until 12 weeks after the release of
5.0-8
5.0-8	First half of June 2024	Until 12 weeks after the release of
5.0-9

---

The more precise planning of UCS 5.2 has not yet been completed. As soon as
UCS 5.2 is released, patchlevel releases for UCS 5.0 will no longer be
provided. The above release dates will then apply to patchlevel releases of
UCS 5.2.

For more information on the topic of releases and maintenance, see:
https://wiki.univention.de/index.php/Maintenance_Cycle_for_UCS.

Hopefully, this change will improve planning reliability on the customer side.
We will adapt the documentation on this topic in a timely manner.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please comment below this blog
article. Otherwise, you can reach out to your contact person from our team.

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