Am 30.11.2013 13:38, schrieb Robert Schweikert:
When i talk to developers, they dont want to switch to newer upstream versions every 18 months. No application lifecycle can handle this.
But the question here is, are applications that we do not build in OBS part of our target? If those applications are open source, they possibly should be part of our target, then why are they not in OBS? What does it take to get those companies/developers to build their application in OBS?
Well, i dont get the question! There are several things around which depends on software we provide. Any Apache,Nginx,PHP,Perl,Python,ruby Software can be developed and operated on our distribution, but maybe deprecated or needs review or redesign 18 months later. While it takes several months to migrate it. Thats the point, i guess not that any company running a shop or a website will put it on obs, but maybe the want to run it on opensuse. I dont talk about software itself, i talk about companys/user using software to run websites, office programs etc.
Once open source applications build in OBS the life cycle discussion goes away, for developers; and to a certain degree for users as well. For developers the app is build in OBS and is always integrated with the "latest and greatest", thus handling change, which is incremental but frequent becomes a small effort compared to handling the accumulated set of changes at every release. For users the life cycle becomes somewhat immaterial as the application has already been tested on the release as it was part of the development process.
When it comes to proprietary applications I am not certain we should care. I do plenty of that w.r.t. my $DAYJOB and let me tell you, it's not pretty and no life cycle is slow enough for proprietary app developers not even the SLES life cycle of almost no changes for eternity.
No, but 5 years support and another 2 years if you pay for it. Well, i can tell you from my $DAYJOB that companys care about that, the longer support the better. Upgrading an operatingsystems costs a lot of time, which means a lot of money. Administration who runs the updates and developers who tests it, even if everything works fine it takes weeks.
Well, that is a bit too generic for my taste. openSUSE is not a solution for a company that needs proprietary applications. But than again neither is almost any other community distribution. One of the key ingredients here is commercial software support. Most companies will rely on some sort of proprietary applications and those generally do not support community distributions. For companies that do without proprietary apps or are willing to put up with a mixed environment I do not see the life cycle as a disadvantage. No one forces anyone to upgrade. Ubuntu LTS, that has been mentioned as an example, has a 24 month life cycle, we have 18, or 36 with Evergreen, thus I'd say we have the time frame covered and I refuse to believe that 2 years is some magic sweet spot that makes things work. I think the 2 year period is a number that was pulled out of somebodies.....
So we come to the point. So tell me, and if you read the other mails, what is openSUSE a solution for in your mind? Thats the question, thats the point you replied to earlier. What is it, whats the target user, what is this all about. Where do we stand and where do we wanne go. Servers, business, gamers, grand mothers who wants to write an email?
With the life cycle you might have a problem as that has a very wide ranging effect. However, if you'd like to see an openSUSE-server "distro" subset, there is nothing in your way to start the effort and get working on it today. The tools are there. This is nothing that can/will.should be decided by discussions or some "magic power group". Having a server profile or subset is a matter of someone doing the work and pushing it into factory and having a team of contributors from around the effort. Be free, go and do the work.
Good answer to any upcoming question. "Go and do it yourself". It should be discussed by the community and at least by this mailinglist, if the discussion says we dont need it, why should i do it? Lets make a deal, board and project ML should discuss it, if we come to the conclusion we want a server subset, i will be the first one in the team and the last one who leaves it.
Well, this is one of my problems, who is somebody? While I agree with Stephan, to a certain extend, that our strategy discussion was somewhat of a disaster, we did emerge with a document. This does describe the things a large part of the community agreed upon as our goals. I do not see where yet another list of goals created by the mystical "somebody" will make any difference.
Well, i hoped someone from the board, if i got it right http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board seems to be part of the description. According to our speech it seems the mystical "somebody" will never be me and never be you.
This discussion goes between 10 people (maximum) on the project list,
Are you suggesting that we have a technical steering committee?
No, not suggesting anything. Just said that these discussion is to important to limit it to the 10 people who actually discuss this.
Later, Robert
Jörg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org