Lifetime of FreeBSD branches

[Colin Percival]

Francisco Reyes wrote:
> So why have a 6.X naming convention to begin with?
> Why not just stay in 5.X name wise?

Because 5.x has been declared to be STABLE, and some of the changes in
6.x will require that applications (and especially kernel modules) be
recompiled (which isn't allowed on a stable branch).

> Is the goal to have a new major branch every 2 years?

Something like that, yes.

Colin Percival