[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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