eugenio.jordan@esa.int writes:
Perhaps this is a sort of dummy questions for software supported by the Community, my apologies in advance.
Aside from the proverbial statement about "unasked questions", your question is particularly appropriate for community-supported software. Many projects do, others don't.
I have been asked on information related to the end of life of support for 3.1 version,
That depends on what you mean by "support". If you mean, will we officially release patches to that version, the answer is "no". We make releases directly off the main branch. If you need features or bugfixes that are not in 3.1, the official upgrade path is to the current release.
If you mean, will we answer questions about it, of course the answer is yes. If for some reason you're uncomfortably upgrading to the current version, we'll certainly discuss generating a patch that you'll have to maintain, but our resources are very limited in that area, although there may be other users with interest who can help. And if we judge it to be a bug and confirm that it still exists in the main branch, we are very likely to generate such a patch based on the older version, since that's the best test of whether it works, and of course it's the most urgent need.
and I was wondering whether you could please provide some insights on how the Mailman life cycle is conceived. For instance, are there periodically planned releases, say 1 per year?
No. We try to release more frequently than that, and until 2019 we almost always had a big release after the sprints at PyCon, but we couldn't sprint effectively in 2020 or 2021. I hope that tradition will continue from next year, though. We have occasionally had a release after the conclusion of Summer of Code, as well, but that's much less consistent.
If so, will you please confirm how long we are to expect the previous versions to be maintained?
There is no maintenance planned on past releases, except future releases. Patches to the current release, whether bugfixes or new capabilities, go directly into the next release.
Regards, Steve