Minor release blog post (#484)

* Minor release blog post Signed-off-by: stianst <[email protected]> * Update blog/2024/release-updates.adoc Co-authored-by: Alexander Schwartz <[email protected]> Signed-off-by: Stian Thorgersen <[email protected]> * Update blog/2024/release-updates.adoc Co-authored-by: Alexander Schwartz <[email protected]> Signed-off-by: Stian Thorgersen <[email protected]> * Update blog/2024/release-updates.adoc Co-authored-by: Alexander Schwartz <[email protected]> Signed-off-by: Stian Thorgersen <[email protected]> * Update blog/2024/release-updates.adoc Signed-off-by: Stian Thorgersen <[email protected]> * Update blog/2024/release-updates.adoc Signed-off-by: Stian Thorgersen <[email protected]> --------- Signed-off-by: stianst <[email protected]> Signed-off-by: Stian Thorgersen <[email protected]> Co-authored-by: Alexander Schwartz <[email protected]>
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+:title: Backwards compatibility in Keycloak releases
+:date: 2024-10-08
+:publish: true
+:author: Stian Thorgersen
+
+With four major releases of Keycloak every year it can be a daunting task to keep deployments up to date. Especially,
+since https://www.keycloak.org/docs/latest/upgrading/index.html#migration-changes[the number of breaking changes have drastically increased the last couple years].
+Combine this with the importance of patching deployments quickly for vulnerabilities, this can leave many deployments
+open to known vulnerabilities as the time and effort required to update to https://github.com/keycloak/keycloak/security/policy[the latest release] is too costly.
+
+Additionally, currently Keycloak client libraries are released together with the server, resulting in new major versions
+of a client library, where in fact there can be no changes at all, or perhaps only a bug fix or two.
+
+For these reasons, after Keycloak 26.0 is released there will be some changes to how Keycloak is being released:
+
+* Keycloak server will have 4 minor releases every year, and a major release every 2-3 years
+* Keycloak client libraries will be released separately. The latest client library release will support all currently supported Keycloak server releases
+
+We will continue to bring new features and enhancements to Keycloak in each release, and we are committed to doing so
+in a backwards compatible way, making it seamless and easy to upgrade.
+
+When a minor comes with breaking changes, such changes will be opt-in. This will be driven through versioning
+where the currently default version for a Feature or an API can not change in a minor release, and there will be a new
+version that can be explicitly enabled. The current version of a Feature or API can be deprecated in a minor, but will
+not be removed until the next major version. This will allow you to gradually roll-out new Feature or API versions separately
+from upgrading. You can choose to get ready for the next major release early, or wait and do it in one
+go.
+
+Backwards compatibility guarantees will only be given to Features and APIs that are fully supported. Preview features or preview APIs,
+as well as non-public APIs may change at any time.