Lifecycle methodology

Scope

BlackTree Lifecycle supports technology ownership, security maintenance and migration planning. It distinguishes ordinary maintenance from security-only, paid or conditional support. The public alpha tests a carefully reviewed catalogue and does not claim whole-market coverage.

Status terms

Date states

Confirmed means a direct source states the boundary. Announced is vendor-published but still prospective. Inferred is derived from a stated policy. Conditional depends on eligibility or another event. Disputed means credible evidence conflicts. Unknown means the source does not establish a date.

Product taxonomy

Vendors, product families, releases, editions, channels, architectures, regions and service tiers are separated when their policies differ. A date is attached only to the variants it covers. Fixed releases, rolling policies, hardware generations and cloud retirements are distinct release models. Family and release URLs remain stable when labels are clarified.

Library and package records

Software-library records are collected directly from official package registries. Package names and versions are deduplicated by ecosystem, and each version links to its source registry evidence. Publication, deletion, deprecation, yanking and unlisting are registry signals. They are never presented as vendor support or EOL dates unless a separate publisher source explicitly establishes that boundary.

Coverage uses the official NuGet append-only catalogue and npm replication and packument services. Durable cursors and bounded hydration batches make both sources resumable and automatically updated, while repeated events update the existing package version instead of increasing the count.

Evidence sources

Vendor lifecycle pages, release schedules, policies and release notes are primary evidence. Support portals, archived pages and partner notices can add context. Secondary aggregators do not override a direct source without review. Each public claim shows its source, confidence and human verification date. Conflicts create a private review item instead of an automatic public change.

Confidence levels

Confidence describes evidence quality, not a probability score.

Verification freshness

Each source has a risk-based human review interval. Current means reviewed within that interval. Review due means the interval has passed. Stale means more than two intervals have passed. Never verified means no human verification is recorded. Retrieval time and human verification time are separate, so an automated fetch never renews the human verification date by itself.

Corrections and revisions

Material changes preserve the previous value, revised value, reason, evidence and reviewer. Vendor policy changes are distinguished from BlackTree corrections. Withdrawn, disputed and corrected conclusions remain traceable in revision history. Typography and presentation changes are excluded from the public change feed.

Material change log · Submit a correction · Request a product

Contractual and legal boundaries

Public information cannot prove a customer's contractual entitlement, paid extension, regional availability, security coverage, service level or compliance position. Product configuration, purchase date and contract terms can change the answer. Replacement context is informational and does not establish compatibility or suitability. Confirm critical dates and entitlements with the vendor or contract owner. BlackTree Lifecycle is not legal, licensing, procurement, security or compliance advice.