New supported versions policy going forward

We are making changes to our releases and supported versions policy. Here's a quick summary if you are in a hurry:

• Going forward we will only support two CKAN minor versions at one time.
• The currently supported version is CKAN 2.9. Security and bug fixes are also provided for CKAN 2.8.
• CKAN 2.7 is no longer supported. Once CKAN 2.10 is out (hopefully in the coming months) support for CKAN 2.8 will be dropped as well, in accordance with the new policy.
• We will drop support for Python 2 in CKAN 2.9 at the end of December 2022. We strongly encourage you to upgrade to Python 3.
• It is very important to always use the latest patch release on your CKAN site. Running an old version puts your site and data at risk. You can see the currently supported patch releases in the documentation.
  
  

The CKAN Tech Team has always made an effort to provide support for different released versions, acknowledging the fact that maintainers may need time and resources to migrate existing instances to the latest stable release. At the same time, some of the versions that were officially supported were really old and used outdated libraries and software that made maintenance difficult. We are simplifying our version support policy to better focus on more recent CKAN versions, encouraging more frequent releases and simpler migrations for site maintainers.

From now on we will support one version (the latest stable) and will provide security and bug fixes for the previous minor release. Right now this means that the latest supported version is CKAN 2.9, and security and bug fixes are provided for CKAN 2.8. Once CKAN 2.10 is out, the supported versions will be CKAN 2.10 and CKAN 2.9.

Within a minor version, users should always use the latest patch release version. These are currently 2.9.5 and 2.8.10 but please check the releases page in our documentation to know the current version, as these might be outdated when you read this. It is very important to run the latest patch release for the minor release you are running, as they contain important bug fixes and security updates. Running CKAN in an unsupported version puts your site and data at risk, so please check today and upgrade if necessary.

Finally, for these site maintainers still running CKAN on Python 2, we will be dropping support for running CKAN on Python 2 at the end of December 2022 (even if CKAN 2.9 is still supported). We strongly encourage you to migrate your sites to Python 3. Most supported extensions have long supported Python 3 and the CKAN 2.9 CHANGELOG and the dedicated migration wiki page provides guidance and tips to migrate your own.

As ever, feel free to reach out on Gitter or create a Discussion if you have any questions or comments.