End-users want a reliable project with lots of functionality that is
going to be maintained by the suppliers (like Apache HTTP, Maven, ORACLE).
If the goal is for a few integrators to share some code, that should be
clearly described as the mission and perhaps it should be dropped as an
Apache project
If it is to produce an ERP that can be adopted by companies for their
mission-critical applications, there needs to be a release and
maintenance policy that makes business sense for the end-users.
At a minimum:
a) Releases have to be supported until "end of life".
b) The EOL and maintenance policy has to be clear.
c) The PMC has to ensure that the team is committed to the projects
policies and procedures.
What would you say to someone who needed an ERP and wanted to install
the "stable" release of OFBIZ in a real company?
Ron
On 21/09/2014 12:07 PM, Anil Patel wrote:
Ron,
You are making good point.
On Sep 21, 2014, at 8:43 AM, Ron Wheeler <[email protected]> wrote:
+1
If this is ever going to be a commercial success, there has to be enough
transparency and reliability that people feel confident in committing to OFBiz.
+1
If the policy is "You can download the current release and commit your
organization's most critical business functions to it but we are not going to fix the
bugs that we find.", it is going to be hard for someone to sell OFBiz to management
regardless of how great the feature list might be.
+1
What if, Users of certain release e.g 11.04 clearly communicate their
willingness to help with maintaining the release. Help includes reporting bugs
and keeping track of fixes that have not made into release of their interest.
In absence of any managed effort to maintain ofbiz release, My recommendation
is to use most recent release. Recently Hans posted nice article on this topic
(https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140909060033-1227556-upgrade-your-erp-system-like-a-phone-app).
Imaging how happy we would be if ORCLE announced that maintaining all these
versions of Java was too much work and they were only going to fix bugs in Java
8. We would be looking for another Java PDQ.
We all know how commercial products are maintained. In case of community based
products, Users of software own the product and so they have right to maintain
software.
If there is any doubt as to the effect of this policy, perhaps some of the
system integrators could ask their customers how this policy would fit their
needs
I agree with you. Customers don’t like to spend money on migrating their system
to newer version of OFBiz unless their is real ROI involved. System Integrators
can support their customers by participating in the community and supporting
OFBiz release branch.
Ron
Regards
Anil Patel
On 20/09/2014 1:23 PM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
I understand your point of view and I even tend to agree with.
For the moment I still personally try to backport on all maintained branches
(those having releases pending). Most of the time it's straightforward, but I
got bitten once or two by wrong backports which created new bugs that I had to
fix.
Still, though it's better now with Jira changes logs reports, the problem is
not everybody is aware of bug fixes backported or not.
The official download page http://ofbiz.apache.org/download.html, says that we
stabilize releases with bug fixes. It's not quite clear if we are backporting
all or only some bug fixes.
I wonder if we should not face the reality. Even during large efforts like HWM
Bugs Crush, we don't/can't backport all bug fixes.
I think we should make that clear and expose a way to users for them to more
"easily" maintain the releases they use. I feel that with the help of the Jira
changes logs reports (thanks Jacopo) this should be possible. I don't think at an
automated way, just a process for users to follow.
Jacques
Le 20/09/2014 18:47, Adrian Crum a écrit :
I don't have time to maintain 4 code bases (trunk + 3 branches). I will fix
things in the trunk, and I will backport those fixes to the most recent branch.
I have no interest in older branches. If someone else is using them, then they
can create a patch for them. So, I have no issues with releasing old branches
with missing fixes - because if anyone really cared about them they would work
harder to maintain them.
Adrian Crum
Sandglass Software
www.sandglass-software.com
On 9/20/2014 5:29 PM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
It seems a bit weird to me to officially release code with bugs when we
have already bug fixes in trunk
Jacques
Le 20/09/2014 17:17, Adrian Crum a écrit :
From my perspective, anyone wanting to use older versions can backport
the changes themselves - either locally, or in the release branches by
providing a patch.
Adrian Crum
Sandglass Software
www.sandglass-software.com
On 9/20/2014 4:07 PM, Ashish Vijaywargiya wrote:
Hello Jacques,
Thanks for your kind words. We started this event considering the fact
to provide fixes for trunk and latest release branch which is 13.07. It
will be of great help if someone from community could pick and back port
the required changes to Release Branch 12.04. In future if we get time
we will also be taking care of back porting to R12.04.
We didn't back port changes in R11.04 just because it is very old branch
and very soon will not be maintained. Thanks.
--
Kind Regards
Ashish Vijaywargiya
HotWax Media - est. 1997
ApacheCon US 2014 Silver Sponsor
http://na.apachecon.com/sponsor/our-sponsors
On Saturday 20 September 2014 05:01 PM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
Le 20/09/2014 13:28, Jacques Le Roux a écrit :
Hi,
It's great to see a second Bug Crush effort!
I have though a question, I see that you (HotWax Media team) only
backport bug fixes to the R13 branch.
I guess it's intended, so why?
I ask this because I already found myself trying to fix issues in R12
and R11 branches (I know will be soon no longer maintained R11 ) and
found they were already backported in R13
Jacques
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: [email protected]
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
