No it doesn't. If you can't keep up you have two options: 1. Pay someone else to do it for you (effectively an LTS) 2. Don't use it Software is imperfect, p

No it doesn't. If you can't keep up you have two options: 1. Pay someone else to do it for you (effectively an LTS) 2. Don't use it Software is imperfect, processes are imperfect. An LTS doesn't fix that, it just pushes problems forward. If you are in a situation where you need a frozen software product, Kubernetes simply doesn't fit the use case and that's okay. I suppose it's pretty much all about expectations and managing those instead of trying to hide mis-matches, bad choices and ineptitude. (most LTS use cases) It's essentially x509 certificate management all over again; if you can't do it right automatically, that's not the certificate lifetime's fault, it's the implementors fault. As for option 1: that can take many shapes, including abstracting away K8S entirely, replacing entire clusters instead of 'upgrading' them, or having someone do the actual manual upgrade. But in a world with control loops and automated reconciliation, adding a manual process seems a bit like missing the forest for the trees. I for one have not seen a successful use of K8S where it was treated like an application that you periodically manually patch. Not because it's not possible to do, but because it's a symptom of a certain company culture.