- [Long Term Support](#long-term-support)

Long Term Support (often referred to as *LTS*) guarantees application developers

a 30 month support cycle with specific versions of Node.js.

You can find more information [in the full LTS plan](https://github.com/nodejs/lts#lts-plan).

Once a stable branch enters LTS, no new features may be added to that release. Changes are

limited to bug fixes, security updates, possible npm updates, documentation updates, and certain

performance improvements that can be demonstrated to not break existing applications.

Semver-minor changes are only permitted if required for bug fixes. Semver-major changes are only

permitted if required for critical security and bug fixes.

Once a stable branch moves into Maintenance mode, only **critical** bugs, **critical** security fixes,

and documentation updates will be permitted.

When you send your pull request, consider including information about

whether your change is breaking. If you think your patch can be backported,

please feel free to include that information in the PR thread.

The current plan is for commits to cherry pick into a staging branch (e.g. v4.x-staging),

which can be done by anyone. The preference would be for the individual landing the commit

on master to backport to staging branches if it is appropriate.

When the LTS working group determines that a new LTS release is required, selected commits

will be picked from the staging branch to be included in the release. This process of making

a release will be a collaboration between the LTS working group and the Release team.