Not all of the users of OpenSimulator are sysadmins. Have you ever worked in a corporate environment? Often the computers that people use are managed by a central IT department and deviating from the long-term supported IT mandated solution is not allowed. Similar situations exist in education. OpenSimulator is not necessarily designed for the sole benefit of a few for-profit grids, in fact, much of the code base has been contributed by people who use *and develop* it in such restricted environments. This is true for content development as well.
Likewise, not all of the contributors have a large R&D budget. For some, upgrading to the latest and greatest is not an option, in fact, it could disable other applications they need to use a shared computer for. Some of these users have contributed major functionality to the code base. As stewards of the code base, we need to keep the needs of *all* users in mind. These are some of the reasons these traditions exist. On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Ilan Tochner <[email protected]> wrote: > It's nice to want to support old Linux versions but anyone who is going to > install OpenSim on Linux, which is not something anyone who isn't a capable > sysadmin will do, can easily set up that machine with a modern version of > Ubunto where Mono 2.10 is supported (or use some other distro and manually > install OpenSim from a third-party website). Had we said that upgrading to > Mono 2.10 would make it harder for non-technical people to run OpenSim then > there would have been some (small) justification for holding back on > advancing OpenSim. However, to do so in order to save sysadmins from > upgrading their outdated distros is putting the needs of the very few above > those of the great majority of OpenSim users. > > Delaying advancement of a software project that is labeled Alpha for the > stated reason places enterprise-level legacy support requirements on an > open-source project that is developed and used by people that have nothing > preventing them from upgrading their systems (Windows and Mac users have no > problem using the latest Mono versions as it is). No end-user is going to > be affected by this upgrade, if any of them is using Linux at home (which I > doubt more than a few dozen are) then they are likely either using Ubunto > in the first place and/or are capable of downloading and installing Mono > from a third-party site. > > How many people are going to be served by delaying an upgrade to .NET 4.0? > How many people will have an inferior OpenSim because of that delay? > > It's not that we're preventing anyone from using the existing OpenSim > version. We're just saying that if you want to use the latest version on > Linux you need to have Mono 2.10 or later installed. If it doesn't come > with your distro then search for a third-party site that provides it and > download it from there. People who can't be bothered to doing either one of > those things can continue using the existing OpenSim version. > > Again, let's focus on advancing OpenSim and not on saving some sysadmins > the few hours it will take them to install and setup Mono and/or a new > Linux distro on their server(s). > > Cheers, > > Ilan Tochner > Co-Founder and CEO > Kitely Ltd. > > > On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 6:16 PM, Mike Chase < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Just curious. Call me crazy and stuff but why are you worrying about >> ancient distros with LTS for cases where upgrades to Mono are clearly >> available. And this is to support software that is perpetually alpha? So >> you are concerned about adopting .NET 4.0 features because someone might >> be >> running an ancient version of debian or Ubuntu presumably in some >> production >> scenarios using software you've branded as Alpha. >> >> Why don't we call OpenSim what it is. A research project. People have >> taken and with considerable effort doe some hardening to that sufficient >> to >> run a production grid. But it is what it is. >> >> And sorry Justin I don't meant to jump on you. You're a good guy. You >> have >> to deal with the other members of a board drawing lines in the sand left >> and >> right that suit themselves and their own business interests. Sorry >> Melanie, >> the "it's never gonna happen" comments are so out of place for a board >> member of an open public project. Really you have no business being in >> the >> position you are. But that's what it is as well. >> >> Ok enough ranting. If you feel that upgrading to the 4.0 .NET apis would >> benefit OpenSim as a whole (I do) then do it. Deciding what versions of >> mono to use and what distribution to use it on are deployment >> considerations >> that someone should be considering carefully based on what they want to >> use >> the software for. And if they are trying to run anything close to a >> production service then they need to be aware of the issues involved in >> the >> various versions of mono and make their choice based on that. >> >> I doubt I get a vote but if I did I'd vote to advance the API version of >> .NET and pick up the new features therein. Document the dependencies and >> let people doing deployment sort out the environment that best meets their >> requirements. My 2 cents. >> >> Mike >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [email protected] >> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Justin >> Clark-Casey >> Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 10:42 PM >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: [Opensim-dev] Raise minimum .net framework version to 4.0 and >> mono >> version to 2.8 (with 2.10 strongly recommended) in 2Q2013 >> >> After some further investigation, it turns out that Mono 2.6 does not make >> the higher parameter Func calls available unless it has been built in a >> special preview mode. This is not available on at least the Ubuntu Mono >> package and I suspect most, if not all, of the other distro packages as >> well. >> >> Therefore, the minimum version of Mono that will use them is 2.8 (for >> which >> C# 4.0 is the default). Polling the earliest supported release versions >> of >> various Linux distros, the situation is >> >> Debian 6.0 (squeeze) Mono 2.6.7 >> Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Mono 1.2.6 >> Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Mono 2.4 >> Ubuntu 11.10 Mono 2.10.8.1 >> Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Mono 2.10.8.1 >> openSUSE 11.4 Mono 2.8.2 >> openSUSE 12.1 Mono 2.10.6 >> CentOS 5 no Mono package >> CentOS 6 no Mono package >> >> I see Debian squeeze as the sticking point here. Debian 7.0 (wheezy) will >> ship Mono 2.10.8.1 and has been frozen since 2012-06-30. Debian does not >> work to release dates so it's impossible to say when it will be released, >> though the indications are that it will be in the first half of this year. >> Even when it is released, Debian squeeze will most probably be supported >> until early 2014. >> >> In light of this, I am going to recommend that we do not update the >> minimum >> version of Mono until Debian wheezy is released. We've already >> effectively >> been living with this situation for a while so I don't think that a bit >> longer is going to hurt, though making modInvoke() properly useable is >> important. If wheezy is not released by the time that OpenSimulator 0.7.6 >> is here, which I anticipate being shortly after Easter, then we can >> revisit >> the topic. >> >> This means that existing binary packages will continue to be compiled >> against .NET 3.5 (though ironically the current 0.7.5-RC packages have >> been >> compiled to work with Mono >2.8 only, which will be fixed for the final >> release). >> >> When the update occurs, everything will compile and run against Mono 2.8 >> but >> Mono 2.10 will be strongly recommended as the Mono 2.8 series has proved >> considerably buggy in the past. >> >> Once the update is made, the target framework will be .net 4.0 rather than >> .net 3.5. This will allow c# 4.0 language features to be used and will >> require the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 packages to be installed on >> Windows. >> >> We've already heard arguments both ways so I doubt that it's worth >> rehashing >> them. However, I also think this would be a marginal decision so I >> welcome >> any new points. >> >> -- >> Justin Clark-Casey (justincc) >> OSVW Consulting >> http://justincc.org >> http://twitter.com/justincc >> _______________________________________________ >> Opensim-dev mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Opensim-dev mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Opensim-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev >
_______________________________________________ Opensim-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
