Median Software Version Lifespan Is Just 18 Months, Study of 7,144 Versions Finds

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A lifecycle database tracking 485 software products analyzed 7,144 versions with confirmed release and end-of-life dates, finding the median supported lifespan is only 18 months, with a mean of 2.3 years skewed by long-lived enterprise products. Cloud services had the shortest median lifespan at under one year, while hardware versions lasted the longest at a median of 2.9 years. Runtimes and frameworks turned over fastest among common development stack components, meaning a Node.js version typically expires before its underlying database or operating system. Internet Explorer ranked as the longest-supported product at a median of 17 years per version, while rapid-release projects like Chrome, Firefox, and Rust replace each version in roughly five weeks. The findings suggest that organizations upgrading software every two to three years statistically spend a significant portion of that cycle running versions no longer receiving security patches.

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