Some very good points. We are discussing similar issues on the packaging list. I invite you to join us and continue this discussion there.
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Packaging Gordon > Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:24:34 -0700 > From: Bryce Harrington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [Desktop_architects] Summary of DAM-3 > To: Mike Hearn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Cc: Desktop_architects <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 10:50:11PM +0200, Mike Hearn wrote: > > > At OpenWengo, we have a youngish application which has not yet been > > > included in distributions, so we're in the unenviable position that most > > > commercial software companies find themselves > > > > Right, exactly. There's tons of open source stuff out there that isn't > > included in distributions for various random reasons. So it becomes > > 3rd party, like commercial apps. > > All software, open and proprietary, is sort of in this same boat. When > we started Inkscape it took a year or more before we were included in > many distributions. Early on in our project we handled all the > packaging ourselves for redhat, suse, mandrake, debian, etc. In most > cases we were lucky to have a passionate user of the given distro to > take care of the packaging for us, we just blessed their work as > official and let them upload new revisions to our servers. > > Mike Hearn's Autopackage was also instrumental during this phase, > because many times the RPM's didn't work, or we lacked a package for a > given platform, so autopackage gave everyone a second chance to get > an inkscape binary up and running. > > In time, as our userbase grew and depended on inkscape, the distros > heard and they were able to take over the packaging duties. In some > cases they were able to use the package scripts our community members > had set up. These days for packaging the only systems we really have to > worry about are windows and osx. And we see a HUGE difference in > our support burden for windows and osx, vs. Linux where we have a distro > layer to screen bugs and handle packaging and distribution for us for > free. > > The amount of time distros will put into your software seems to work out > proportionately to how important the software is to the end users. They > appreciate it if the upstream provider is willing to accept bug reports > from the distro and does packaging and building in a manner consistent > with other software. I imagine much of this holds true whether the > software is open, or closed-but-free. > > For true 3rd party closed source software that is sold per-box, I'm not > sure what best practices are. It would be interesting to know to what > extent distros work with companies operating with traditional commercial > software models. > > It would be interesting to know how much of the porting effort is due to > binary compatibility issues, and how much is just debugging installers? > If the work is more the latter than the former, then I'd wonder if a > good hybrid strategy would be to keep the app closed but open the > installation scripts? > > Bryce > > _______________________________________________ > Desktop_architects mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_architects > _______________________________________________ Desktop_architects mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_architects
