30th December, 2018

As you might have learned from the Betaflight GitHub page, our next release will be 4.0. Betaflight 4.0 will bring unified targets, which is the the culmination of years of work that started in 2016 with the introduction of remappable resources, and it will drastically change the way how Betaflight is built and distributed. To you as the user, not much in how you download and install the Betaflight firmware will change, but you will get some noticeable improvements:

• We'll have to spend less time on maintaining and releasing the firmware, meaning that we'll have more time to work on new and exciting features;
• manufacturers will have an easy way to release custom configurations for all of their boards and ready-to-fly (including RX setup and tuning) craft based on original Betaflight firmware - you will no longer be stuck on using old firmware, or recreating your configuration from scratch;
• the tinkerers amongst you will be able to share Betaflight firmware with your home built improvements amongst your friends without having to build and distribute separate targets for everybody's board.

(These changes are planned for F4 and F7, F3's flash space limitations mean we won't be able to fit all of this in.)

We are almost there with the implementation of these changes, but since they are quite complex, and getting 'almost there' doesn't buy us much, we have decided that we need to take more time to complete them, make sure the way users can use the firmware still works as expected, and properly test the new firmware. For this reason we have decided to postpone the planned release date for Betaflight to 01 April 2019. We will keep doing monthly releases of Betaflight 3.5 with bugfixes and new / updated targets in the meantime. In addition to the drastic changes mentioned above, Betaflight 4.0 will have a number of other exciting new features and improvements:

• yet again improved flight performance;
• 'Launch control' mode; and
• switchable profiles for the OSD layout.

30th December, 2018

As announced earlier, Betaflight 4.0 will introduce a radically new way to define targets. At the moment, we are making the changes necessary for this, and this requires some changes to how targets are defined in the 'legacy' way. Because of this, any pull request opened against `master` that introduces a new target is likely to be outdated by the time it has been reviewed. This means extra work for the target maintainer and the reviewers, for little or no benefit.

Because of this, the following embargo is put in place:

1. From 30/12/2018 on until the release of Betaflight 4.0 (scheduled for 01/04/2019), no pull requests that introduce new targets against `master` are accepted. Because any such pull requests will be outdated by the time 4.0 is released, they will be closed;
2. During the time that 1. is in place, pull requests adding new targets (in 3.5 format) against the `3.5.x-maintenance` branch will be considered. This is an exception to the rule that all pull requests must be opened against `master`. This exception only applies to pull requests containing no other changes than a new target and a documentation page for the new target. These new targets will be included in upcoming 3.5 maintenance releases;
3. Targets added under the exception in 2. will have to be ported into 4.0 before 4.0 is released. The format that these targets will have in 4.0 is yet to be determined, and instructions for porting the targets will have to be written, but we expect the maintainers of these targets to make themselves available to assist with this task when the time comes. Please follow the news and updates that are posted here or to the Betaflight GitHub page to keep track of when action is required.