Samba

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Samba product description

Automate product release and end-of-life management

Samba is a free software re-implementation of the SMB networking protocol, and was originally developed by Andrew Tridgell. Samba provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients and can integrate with a Microsoft Windows Server domain, either as a Domain Controller (DC) or as a domain member. As of version 4, it supports Active Directory and Microsoft Windows NT domains.

Samba (Samba) release, version and end-of-life information

Figure: Release, patch and end-of-life cycle of product Samba (Samba)

Samba release strategy

The regular Samba release cycle intends a new release series: * six months fully supported, * another six months in the maintenance mode, * six months in the security fixes only mode. In total, each series is maintained for a period of approximately 18 months. **Example:** If 4.5 is the current release series, then 4.4 would be in maintenance mode and 4.3 would be in the security fixes only mode. The support of 4.2 would be stopped with the release of 4.5.0. Each series can have any number of desired minor releases. These are usually released every 6 weeks (current stable release series), resp. every 9 weeks (maintenance mode).