Hello Tom,
A few thoughts on the LTS - it's good we are on the users list just for
this topic I think.
LTS (Long Term Support) is often misunderstood. Canonical introduced the
notion of LTS, but few realize that they were able to do so and are able
to maintain this kind of version for the sole reason that there are
customers directly funding the LTS. In other words, you can have a LTS
of Ubuntu because there are people/companies/governments directly paying
for it, usually under the form of support contracts.
While TDF is not a company, it is also not directly funding development
(i.e hiring dozens of developers for instance), nor does it provide
professional support. It is thus up to the companies providing support
and developing LibreOffice that can provide something like a LTS
version. In practice that is what you get with Collabora, Canonical, Red
Hat, others like Igalia, Itomig (although I could be wrong, maybe their
services are more tailored).
Creating a LTS costs money, invested in support and backporting mostly.
This money must be found somewhere, and so must the skills necessary for
development and support. LTS will never, however magically produce a
"better quality release"; but it will produce a set of nice support
contracts :-) . I know there is a myth that if a LTS for every major
Free Software components was to be released, things would be better and
peace would come unto this world, but unfortunately that is not how it
works. LTS versions do not imply a better quality and less bugs; they do
however imply large upstream contracts and deals.
As a note of interest, my previous experience as a board member of the
foundation and my current (educated) guess as a contributor have
highlighted an interesting pattern: most of of the donations to the
Document Foundation do not come from large corporations. They come from
regular people and small businesses. We -I won't hesitate to speak on
behalf of the entire foundation here- are very grateful to you and all
the people who help this project. But *I* cannot help drawing a few
observations from this pattern: if we are to satisfy our benefactors,
then we are primarily an end-user project (understand: a consumer
oriented project) and we should not be craving heftier donations from
large deployments in the entreprise. It is something to keep in mind for
the future, I think.
Best,
Charles.
Le 06.08.2014 14:41, Tom Davies a écrit :
Hi :)
Errr, i think the LTS idea works well as long as there is a 6 monthly
release, or at least a much faster-paced release cycle for another
branch.
The 6 monthly alone is difficult for many people to keep up with, even
for
big fans, but it does do a lot for excitement and energy. It motivates
people to try to get their improvements or new features in quickly and
rewards them by getting their ideas out their and being used in the
real
world extremely quickly. I agree and think that is a big motivator.
Regards from
Tom :)
On 6 August 2014 13:16, Tom Davies <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi :)
I really like the rapid development rate. I think it does generate
more
interest and not just amongst the devs.
I have probably been sounding really negative in this thread but i
have to
say that i think everyone here does a fantastic job and LibreOffice is
really quite amazing as a result of all the hard work people put in.
While there are a few long-running issues and new issues sometimes
crop up
when new features (and greater compatibility with MS format) are added
it
seems that most things get sorted out impressively quickly. Joel and
the
QA team (and the devs, of course) deserve applause for getting the
coding
error-rate down to the lowest of any project anywhere.
I do also like the Ubuntu LTS (=long term support) way of having a
special
release every 2 years that focusses primarily on stability and that
for the
next 5 years all bug-patches for any release are ported back to it.
It
also makes a big splash with changes to the UI (UX?) (and under the
bonnet
stuff) and as a result gets tons of coverage in the Press with tons of
articles anticipating what the big changes are going to be and arguing
as
to which is the most important or the most shocking or whatever.
I think that is the only thing missing from LibreOffice. having
something
like an LTS might make it far better for both corporate environments
and
for other people who can't download and install new versions as often
as a
LibreOffice fan with unlimited broadband might.
Regards from
Tom :)
On 6 August 2014 12:56, Charles-H. Schulz <
[email protected]> wrote:
Nino,
Right on target; I could not have said it better. As for the release
pace
there is a theory that suggests that slowing it to a rearly rythmn
would
decrease the intetest of developers. But that is obviously a theory,
and
cannot be an exact science.
Best,
Charles.
On 6 août 2014 13:50:57 CEST, Nino Novak <[email protected]> wrote:
>Am 06.08.2014 13:07, schrieb Tom Davies:
>
>> So again the question has apparently gone back to "What is the
>advantage of
>> the "Still" branch. Why would people choose it or what circumstances
>would
>> suit "Still" better than "Fresh"?"
>
>The main advantage is its age: it's more mature; it has been in use for
>a
>longer time; people know it better; more questions have been answered
>in all
>the support forums etc.
>
>You see, the main problem is not having two branches, it's having two
>branches which do not differ too much - just half a year. Therefore,
>both
>are rather "fresh", there is no "really mature" version, at least not
>in the
>public.
>
>So the thing to really complain about is the lack of a really mature
>(2-3-4
>years or more) version! Therefore, all the bug fixing etc does not
>really
>improve the stability of the software as branches end their lifetime
>too
>soon after receiving their last bugfix update.
>
>I'm not sure what the effects would be if there was a Long Time Support
>version. Maybe, everybody would switch to this LTS verison and bug
>reporting
>would decrease dramatically. But maybe also, that peoples'
>satisfachtion
>would grow considerably and therefore also commitment and loyalty. Who
>knows?
>
>In a first step I'd very much like the community to decrease the
>release
>frequeny to once a year instead of every 6 months.
>
>Nino
>
>--
>To unsubscribe 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
--
Envoyé de mon téléphone avec Kaiten Mail. Excusez la brièveté.
--
To unsubscribe 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
--
To unsubscribe 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
