Product Lifecycle Policy

This policy defines the various stages for product and feature changes and provides resources for information about such changes. HERE may add, change, discontinue, or remove any HERE product, feature, or capability. You should always use the latest versions of HERE products.

Product lifecycle

HERE products move through different lifecycle stages, from initial testing, to release, to discontinuation. The product lifecycle stages are defined as follows:

• Beta - Nearly commercial-ready products that aren't yet to a standard that meets Service Level Agreements (SLA) and/or other commercial standards. These products are good candidates for testing new features, but aren't commercially available, and access to these products is generally given by invitation only.
• Active - Commercially available products. SLAs cover Active products, when applicable.
• In maintenance - Products that are still commercially available, and their maps are still updated, but receive only critical updates and bug fixes. These products won't receive new features. These products are still covered by SLAs, when applicable, and are available for purchase, but migration to a successor product is likely to occur within 12 months.
• Deprecated - Products that are no longer commercially available to new customers, with support limited to contractual obligations, including any applicable SLAs. Migrate to a successor product to take advantage of new features and capabilities.
• Discontinued - Products that are no longer available commercially or in production. The documentation for Discontinued products is no longer available.

HERE may deprecate or discontinue any HERE product. HERE provides a deprecation notice to you at least six months in advance of a product being Discontinued. Additionally, HERE supports Deprecated SDKs for six months after deprecation, and within six months you shall upgrade to a newer version of the SDK.

Feature lifecycle

In addition to the product lifecycle, features within a product also have a lifecycle. The feature lifecycle terms and change terminology are defined as follows:

• Added - A new feature that adds capabilities to the product.
• Changed - An existing feature now behaves differently than in prior releases.
• Deprecated - The feature is obsolete and stops working 6 - 12 months from the time customers are first notified of the deprecation. You must migrate to the replacement feature. Use of the feature during the deprecation period may result in warnings indicating that the feature is currently Deprecated, but the feature continues to operate, and also has documentation and support until it's removed.
• Documentation - A significant change to the structure or delivery method of the documentation beyond the normal content updates that reflect product changes.
• Fixed - A bug fixed in this release. Bugs listed in release notes are either customer reported bugs or bugs reported as a known issue in a prior version's release notes.
• Known issue - Known issues or limitations and their relevant workarounds.
• Other - Noteworthy information which falls outside of standard change definitions.
• Performance - A change that improves the responsiveness of the system, enabling it to process data faster or provide a response more quickly than in prior releases.
• Removed - The feature has reached the end of the deprecation period and is no longer available for use. The feature is no longer documented or supported.
• Security - An update that fixes a security vulnerability.

Resources

You can find information about product and feature changes in these resources: