[pkg-kolab] Kolab Systems (ISV) requirements (was: cyrus-imapd 2.3.16)

Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems) vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com
Wed Sep 1 13:49:21 UTC 2010


Mathieu Parent wrote:
> (I'm answering fast as you may have chosen the wrong path, see below)
> 

Hi Mathieu!

Let me answer to the questions/answers separately, as to avoid obfuscating the 
thread.

> On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 1:19 PM, Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems)
> <vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com> wrote:
> > Fourthly, since Kolab Systems had a business interest in native packages 
for
> > Debian as well as Ubuntu, we are going to have to work on the packaging 
and
> > quality assurance; but we have different requirements to product support 
and
> > functionality then most distributions have or allow;
> 
> What are the differences? In Debian, appart from being DFSG (aka free
> software) and avoiding library duplication, we are open to any
> suggestion.
> 

Many ISVs have certain requirements providing their software for one or the 
other distribution, it's usually the product support- and/or life-cycle that 
is different from a distribution's / the community's interest, but it could 
stretch as far as deliberate library duplication and/or incompatibility with 
packaging guidelines; Note that I'm not saying Kolab Systems would / will 
either of those, but in a business $$$ controls the engineer, and not vice-
versa.

For example, Kolab Systems may be required to support customer deployments of 
kolab-2.3 series for a number of years, while nobody in the community cares 
about it anymore some time after kolab-3.0 hits the fan.

On a related topic, Kolab Systems -inherent to it all being supported and 
such- requires its own distribution channels; sometimes we may need to quickly 
solve one or the other issue and can not allow ourselves the risk of being 
held back by community distribution policies or access levels our engineers 
may or may not have. On a related note, we cannot allow ourselves the risk of 
a community member breaking our supported version of the product.

Other times we have to release something that is not quite ready yet to what 
is considered to be a stable distribution release -adjacent to unstable 
distribution versions. We wouldn't want to burden the community members on the 
receiving end of bugs with such volatility.

Another example would be, that for the Kolab product, we touch configuration 
files from other packages. Most commonly, such is not allowed to be included 
in native packages included in a distribution's package repositories.

Either way, however, this would all be related to Kolab Systems more so then 
Debian specifically.

-- 
Jeroen van Meeuwen
Senior Engineer, Kolab Systems AG

e: vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com
t: +316 42 801 403
w: http://www.kolabsys.com

pgp: 9342 BF08



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