Support Notifications
Overview
The Ed-Fi Alliance regularly reviews its technology products to assess their fitness for current strategic goals and our ability to continue maintaining them. Older versions need to move out of support, and sometimes entire product lines are retired.
- Fully supported products receive new features and compatibility updates / testing with related software, in addition to bug / security fixes and framework / dependency updates.
- Maintenance mode products receive framework / dependency updates and critical bug / security fixes. They do not receive new features and may be incompatible with newer versions of other software
- Example: Ed-Fi ODS Admin App is now in maintenance mode as of December, 2023. It will be updated to .NET 8 all all NuGet package dependencies will be brought up to date. But there will be no new features, and it will not become compatible with Ed-Fi ODS/API 7.x.
- A product line that is still a core part of the Ed-Fi technology offering may remain fully supported while older versions eventually fall out of support, for example in 2023, we ended support for Ed-Fi ODS/API versions less than 5.3.
- Or, a product may be moved to the Ed-Fi Exchange for community support. The Alliance tech team will not formally offer updates, though we remain open to a conversation about bug / security fixes on a case-by-case basis.
tip
Specific notices may be provided for individual products, and those notices may provide additional details or guidance for uses of the affected products and versions. Specific end-of-support notices are listed in the panel to the right of this text.
→ See Ed-Fi Technology Suite Supported Versions for a detailed view of which products and versions are currently in or out of support.
Description
What changes when a product or version of a product is out-of-support?
- Support tickets on out-of-support versions will receive lower priority or be closed without investigation.
- The Alliance will stop releasing updates or enhancements to out of support products.
- If applicable, code repositories are marked as archived or similar, and README
files are updated to reflect the current status. These repositories may move
to the Ed-Fi Exchange.
- This may not be possible if the product repository still has supported versions.
- The Alliance will stop monitoring codebases and running processes designed to monitor security and vulnerability of Ed-Fi products.
- The Alliance may withdraw or change training content that includes references to out-of-support products.
- Alliance help desk services will not provide support for installation, configuration or other usage of products that are out-of-support.
- The Alliance starts allocating additional resources and budgets towards other technical efforts.
- No new Ed-Fi credentials will be created for an out-of-support product. Existing Ed-Fi credentials will not be renewed.
What doesn't change?
- Ed-Fi community members will continue to have full access to source code, under the existing open source license.
- All existing documentation on will be retained, though it may be moved to another location in order to ensure that technical documentation remains uncluttered and friendly.
- Ed-Fi community members will continue to have full access to source code, under the existing open source license.
- Some of the tooling that the Alliance uses to monitor and maintain this security of the affected product may be available for others to use; please contact the Alliance if this is of interest.
- If guidance on upgrade to a supported version exists, the Alliance will provide help desk services to support this change. However, support for this process may be limited due to complexity or cost in investigating older versions; users of products are therefore advised to migrate while products are still supported.
- Ed-Fi community members can continue to offer support services based on out-of-support products. This is not recommended.
- Any existing badges/certifications impacted by an out-of-support product will remain in place until the credential expires.