[libreoffice-marketing] Re: Of "business ready use" and bugs in LibreOffice and a LibreOffice LTS

Hi Charles,

Le 2012-06-06 11:28, Charles-H.Schulz a écrit :
> Hello Marc,
>
> Le mercredi 06 juin 2012 à 11:04 -0400, Marc Paré a écrit :
> > Le 2012-06-06 06:12, Charles-H. Schulz a écrit :
> > > Interesting ideas here... I wonder how we could plot this with respect to
> > > our existing resources.  The key issue here is resources . LTS only makes
> > > sense if you derive revenue from it.I think we could  relabel one branch as
> > > LTS, the older one if it brings more clarity. It will work for one year. I
> > > don' think working on a branch for 5 years makes sense for a FOSS project,
> > > as -again- the examples pointed out stem from commercial offerings (even
> > > Mozilla with all its resources only provide a one year support and
> > > Canonical or Red Hat offer paid-for support for customers paying each year))
> >
> > Not necessarily. An LTS version is by name only that: "a long term
> > support version" and does not in itself bring on any connotation of any
> > revenue generation for LibreOffice nor any other software company.
> >
> > Imagine all of our large-scale installations that are now occurring in
> > the EU and BR. When they find out that they will have to change on a
> > more frequent basis to keep up with bug fixes (our present model will
> > only bug-fix for only the previous version and not any versions prior to
> > this); at some point, there will be some sort of rationalization of
> > their use of their large-scale LibreOffice installation and their TCO
> > (total cost of ownership). If there are any other office suites (MSO,
> > AOO) that offer any product with LTS (you may call it whatever you wish,
> > ESR-extended support release ...), then, the cost related to continual
> > update/upgrade-testing will put LibreOffice at a clear disadvantage over
> > any LTS-version-office-suite. I cannot imagine a government entity or
> > large institution/business opting for costly installation/retraining
> > costs ad infinitum ... there will eventually be a breaking point and the
> > loss will be ours to bear.
>
>
> I see your point, but perhaps my answer will sound pessimistic: even
> with a LTS version things will not improve. The reason is simple: there
> are two different issues that are mixed: one is the incremental update
> and the other one is the support duration of a version.
>
> Let's say we have a LTS version as you propose. Let's say we commit to 5
> years of support(!!!). How do security fixes and other patches get
> pushed to this version?
>
> Today, it's done by... redownloading a ful version of LibreOffice. So
> today it makes sense, after one organization has deployed, say,  3.x.3
> to migrate to a 3.x.4 because that's where the patches will be anyway.
> Today we cannot patch a version and send the update over to one
> instance.  I think that's the real crux of the problem. Otherwise, we
> would say, in a month or so: "the 3.5 (note the numbering here) is our
> LTS release". And anything that would need to be patched would be
> patched incrementally. No need to redownload another version of
> LibreOffice. Basically what I'm saying is that -while I think the LTS is
> mostly a business issue because it requires a lot of resources to
> produce and maintain a LTS-  until we have an incremental updates
> mechansim, our present discussion is not moot, but close to it. Because
> we're stuck in a situation where the only thing we could say is: "get
> this version (say, the 3.5.4), it's very stable. If you need updates,
> we'll have to redeploy". And there's really no other way to go about it,
> and it's the same for AOO btw.
>
> Best,
> Charles.

We could prepare the way to LTS WITH INCREMENTAL UPDATES by offering 
businesses reassurances that it is coming.

In the meantime, we could commit to one particular branch with an LTS 
designation and tell organizations to write back with any bugs where 
these could be fixed with an upgrade offered to them (no new options or 
major code revision would be offered, only security fixes and some bug 
fixing depending on severity). They would then have the option of 
re-installing the LTS version (branch) which they would have most likely 
tested well enough to accept this new update; hopefully the bug fixes 
would not cause major disruptions to their systems. This is pretty well 
what the Mozilla group is offering except for the longer term period of 
3 years. (I am not an advocate of an LTS with 5 year term for an office 
suite as I find this too long of a stretch when new options are being 
actively added to the non-LTS versions.)

Presumably, if the LTS term were for 3 years, our dev team would have 
worked on the process of "incremental updates" by the end of the 3 year 
cycle and ready for the next LTS version. Keep in mind that the 
incremental updates would be for that LTS branch of LibreOffice.

Cheers,

Marc




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