On 07/10/2011, Tom Davies <[email protected]> wrote: > > As far as i can tell the 3.4.x branch has never been claimed to have > long-term support. Patches, updates and such are never likely to be > back-ported to that branch. Although that is not really an issue as LO > doesn't seem to do updates anyway. It's the long-term support that makes > something "stable" and thus useful to corporate clients. >
Rubbish. What is useful to businesses is a product that performs consistently, reliably and to high quality. Per se, no business is going to buy a product because of long-term "support" (whatever that is) if the product is poor quality in the first instance. This is a ludicrous claim: a broken photocopier is bought but because the supplier offers "support", the photocopier is miraculously fixed! > At the outset the 3.3.x branch was claimed to have long term support of up > to 1 year from release date. Quite what that support means in a project > that develops so much so fast that it has no time for minor updates is > unclear. The 3.4.3 is claimed to be "stable" but again it's unclear what > that means. Perhaps LO will decide whether to use the Debian or the Ubuntu > plan or make a new one. At the moment it's just unclear or at least not > obvious. > Please refer to the url where it is stated that long-term support is provided, especially by whom. > On the plus side it is relatively trivial to test new releases and then > roll-out upgrades without messing-up peoples settings or even to revert back > to previous releases if a serious problem happens. People seldom need to be > on the same release at the same time in order to share stuff but to create > some things initially you might need the latest. > Nonsense. Provide evidence of a single entity where users are encouraged to test new releases (instead of performing productive output contributing to the entity's profits) and time involved is accounted for as "trivial". If a document to be created requires a feature available only in the latest version, everyone then requires the latest version in order to see the document as intended. Another typical contradictory sentence. > > The Ubuntu model differs from the Debian one by having strictly scheduled > releases every 6 months. These are it's equivalent of "Development" There is more to gnu/linux than ubuntu. > So, Ubuntu has a system that is clear and obvious to non-geeky corporate > clients. It gives them confidence in planning for the future, such as when > to schedule a roll-out of upgrades across a large number of machines. They > also gain confidence knowing that if threats develop or accidents happen > then updates will happen 'automatically' and they can rely on getting tech > support if needed. > Rubbish. Businesses have chosen redhat (as an historic example of life before ubuntu) because of stability and security whereby software versions have operated in _years_ before changes are required. Businesses also averse to automatic updates; because risk assessments are often required to evaluate the impact of software changes, especially where customisations have been done for specific reasons. > Of course the flip-side, as most non-business types appreciate, is that the > product might be better sometimes with a little more work which might take 5 > mins or might take 5 months. Most OpenSource projects (before Ubuntu) were > quite happy delaying releases until they were ready with the better > product. It's more rigorous and the product has better integrity but it is > exactly the opposite of corporate culture and totally beyond their > understanding. They see it as lazy and unpredictable even tho that misses > the point completely. Ubuntu's answer was to 'freeze' development of each > project at a point the product is "good enough" and then the next release > hopefully contains the better product. > More rubbish. What business does not understand the software quality assurance process, used in proprietary software by internal staff? Get off ubuntu's ... and realise the gnu/linux world is far, far greater. > The 3.4.3 is the best release to use. I'm not sure it's appropriate to > describe one branch as better than another for any particular reason now > that the 3.4.3 is claimed to be stable (whatever they mean by that). > Existing users of 3.3.0 and 3.3.1 will need to start thinking about details > of upgrading soon as their year is almost up already. 3.3.2 and 3.3.3 need > to start planning if they haven't already. My plan is to sit&wait for the > Ppa to give me a new one but i have already downloaded the 3.4.3 for both > Windows and Debian-family (Ubuntu) and saved it to the network so i can > upgrade if i happen to have time and access to a particular machine. Not > exactly a good corporate strategy and not a great plan for places that have > a lot of machines! > LO34 is not the best to use; published bugs tell the story. Users can use LO33 for as long as they wish, of their own volition. A user can use LO33 in perpetuity regardless of "support". This constant upgrade mentality of software is tiresome and inefficient. If a user has a single, simple, basic requirement (e.g. to write and print a club newsletter) and the hardware works for 10 years, until that hardware fails, the (open source) software can continue to be used without upgrade. -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
