This is a bad idea. I personally feel that an installer is mandatory. Eclipse and IntelliJ have installers for all platforms. Leaving it to third parties will mean that we have no oversight on the quality and ease of use of the installer. Only distributing a zip file implies that skills beyond learning to code with NetBeans will be required. We can pretty much write off the education sector if there is no installer. Sorry to be harsh but this is a line I believe we must not cross.
It is unfortunates, as someone has pointed out, that Apache is not end user friendly but that is no excuse. NetBeans is an end user program and must be as easy to install as any other IDE and have an official installer. Ken -----Original Message----- From: Laszlo Kishalmi <laszlo.kisha...@gmail.com> Sent: November 27, 2019 2:41 PM To: Apache NetBeans <dev@netbeans.apache.org> Subject: [DISCUSS] Dropping Installers from the Release Process leave that work to Third Party Distributors Dear all, It is a great burden to us to provide the best out-of-the-box install experience with NetBeans. That would mean, providing an installer with JDK, nb-javac probably javafx. See the threads: https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/a3e6051130e18aae3f7a81c562a63ac96d3a3a07d4bcbee074392d59@%3Clegal-discuss.apache.org%3E https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/489f17e30d9125ee48e2d78dc36572db6a3f5d6474f492458e0db151@%3Clegal-discuss.apache.org%3E On 11/26/19 9:29 PM, Laszlo Kishalmi wrote: > > Dear all, > > I try to summary the lengthy threads about bundling OpenJDK GPL+CPE > with Apache NetBeans. > > There are mainly two readings of GPL+CPE: > > 1. OpenJDK (GPL+CPE) + NetBeans (Apache) = Executable which can be > distributed under Apache license, due to CPE 2. CPE only allows > other product built on Java to be distributed > under their own license. > > As I'm not a lawyer, I cannot answer which interpretation is correct > (maybe none of them). ASF has every right to regard the second > interpretation, thus GPL+CPE ended up in the Category-X licenses. > > The following viable possibilities were brought up: > > 1. We may apply for an exception to the board 2. Use some download > logic in the installer. > 3. Leave the binary packaging and distribution to third parties. > > Regarding that there are interest from third parties to built on > Apache NetBeans, I'm going to recommend the PMC to select a few > distributor for creating installer packages and we limit/drop our > installer bundle creation in the future. > > Thank you, > > Laszlo Kishalmi > I do not think that after this discussion we would get the exception from the board Geertjan might try to bring it up there as well. As of me option 2 is questionable. Option 3. is a bit hard to say, but if we can't produce proper installation packages, it would probably better to not create those packages at all, leave that for others. How I imagine that: 1. From 11.3 we remove the convenience binaries and installers from our download page 2. We would still create, sign and host our nbm-s. 3. On our download page we have the source package and a section for third party distributors. Well of course this thread is just to start a discussion about this matter. I know it would hurt the brand, but probably it is better than produce some sub-optimal installers while other parties can come with all the bells and whistles. Thank you, Laszlo Kishalmi
