-=pod
+package Moose::Manual::Support
-=head1 NAME
+# ABSTRACT: Policies regarding support, releases, and compatibility.
-Moose::Manual::Support - Policies regarding support, releases, and
-compatibility.
+__END__
+
+=pod
=head1 SUPPORT POLICY
use of that feature will cause a warning. Eventually, the deprecated feature
will be removed.
+In some cases, it is not possible to deprecate a behavior. In this case, the
+behavior will simply be changed in a major release.
+
=head1 RELEASE SCHEDULE
Moose is on a system of quarterly major releases, with minor releases as
can add new ones). A minor release can include new features and bug fixes.
Major releases may be backwards incompatible. Moose prioritizes
-correctness over backwards compatibility or performance; see the L<Deprecation
-Policy> to understand how backwards incompatible changes are announced.
+correctness over backwards compatibility or performance; see the L<DEPRECATION
+POLICY> to understand how backwards incompatible changes are announced.
Major releases are scheduled to happen during fixed release windows. If the
window is missed, then there will not be a major release until the next
Moose was declared production ready at version 0.18 (via L<<
http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=608144 >>).
+=head1 PERL VERSION COMPATIBILITY
+
+As of version 2.00, Moose officially supports being run on perl 5.8.3+. Our
+current policy is to support the earliest version of Perl shipped in the latest
+stable release of any major operating system (this tends to mean CentOS). We
+will provide at least six months notice (two major releases) when we decide to
+increase the officially supported Perl version. The next time this will happen
+is in January of 2012, when Moose 2.06 will increase the minimum officially
+supported Perl version to 5.10.1.
+
+"Officially supported" does not mean that these are the only versions of Perl
+that Moose will work with. Our declared perl dependency will remain at 5.8.3 as
+long as our test suite continues to pass on 5.8.3. What this does mean is that
+the core Moose dev team will not be spending any time fixing bugs on versions
+that aren't officially supported, and new contributions will not be rejected
+due to being incompatible with older versions of perl except in the most
+trivial of cases. We will, however, still welcome patches to make Moose
+compatible with earlier versions, if other people are still interested in
+maintaining compatibility. Note that although performance regressions are
+acceptable in order to maintain backwards compatibility (as long as they only
+affect the older versions), functionality changes and buggy behavior will not
+be. If it becomes impossible to provide identical functionality between modern
+Perl versions and unsupported Perl versions, we will increase our declared perl
+dependency instead.
+
=head1 CONTRIBUTING
Moose has an open contribution policy. Anybody is welcome to submit a