Shibboleth 1.3 end-of-life announcement; Shibboleth 2 support

Posted on Tuesday, 17 February 2009

Here is information regarding the support for versions of Shibboleth in the UK federation and an announcement from the Internet2 developers of Shibboleth.

The Shibboleth 2 SP software is now fully supported by the UK federation helpdesk. This support includes on-line documentation to help with configuring and registering Shibboleth 2 SPs, as well as training courses for this software available through JANET(UK). At the time of writing, more than 70 of the UK federation's SP entities are already known to be running the Shibboleth 2 software.

Helpdesk support for the Shibboleth 2 IdP software has not yet reached this level; nevertheless, a significant number of Shibboleth 2 IdPs have already been successfully deployed within the UK federation and we welcome additional registrations. We anticipate having on-line documentation to support this process available to coincide with the release of JANET(UK)'s new Shibboleth 2 IdP training course in March 2009.

We strongly recommend that sites currently running Shibboleth 1.3 in production plan to upgrade to the current version of Shibboleth well in advance of the announced end-of-life date. This will protect against the possibility of a forced but unplanned migration from 1.3 should a security issue or incompatibility be discovered after the end-of-life date has been reached.

In addition, sites now choosing between Shibboleth 1.3 and Shibboleth 2 for new installations are recommended to choose Shibboleth 2 unless the lifetime of the installation will not extend beyond the end-of-life date.

Simon Cooper
UK federation Service Manager

Internet2 announcement:

From: Steven_Carmody@brown.edu
To: shibboleth-announce@internet2.edu
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:44:45 -0500
Subject: [Shibboleth-Announce] Announcement -- End of Life Date for Shibboleth v1.3

The Shibboleth team will transition Shibboleth v1.3 from Previous Stable release to the Earlier/Unsupported category on June 30, 2010.

We currently do not add new features to v1.3, nor guarantee that changes made to the current release are backwards compatible with v1.3. As of June 30, 2010, the team will no longer promise to supply security updates. We would continue to answer questions on the mailing lists about v1.3 as time and knowledge allows.

For details on the support levels, see the Shibboleth web site:

We believe that the transition schedule -- this change is proposed to occur 17 months from now -- builds in enough time for sites to plan and implement for this change.

Edited by JohnMurison on 17 February 2009, at 03:35 PM