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

Fyi

Canonical changed LTS support for the desktop from 3 to 5 years, 
starting with 12.04, to better accommodate their OEM customers.

> Normal Ubuntu releases are supported for 18 months. Previous Ubuntu 
> LTS (Long Term Support) releases are supported for 3 years on the 
> desktop and 5 years on the server. Starting with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, LTS 
> releases will be supported for 5 years on both the desktop and the 
> server.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

hth,
-Craig

On 06/05/2012 01:42 PM, Tom Davies wrote:
> Hi :)
> Ubuntu LTS lasts for 3 years (for desktops) but are released every 2 years. 
>
> This gives orgs the 1 year of testing they need before migrating from the previous LTS and moving to the new one.  If they gave 3 years support and released every 3 years then orgs would have a 1 year gap running an unsupported LTS while they were still testing the new one.  Now i understand why the 1 year overlap is so important to Ubuntu. 
>
> Regards from
> Tom :) 
>
>
> --- On Tue, 5/6/12, Marc Paré<marc@marcpare.com>  wrote:
>
> From: Marc Paré<marc@marcpare.com>
> Subject: [libreoffice-marketing] Re: Of "business ready use" and bugs in LibreOffice and a 
> LibreOffice LTS
> To: marketing@global.libreoffice.org
> Date: Tuesday, 5 June, 2012, 21:23
>
> Hi Charles,
>
> Le 2012-06-05 09:12, Charles-H. Schulz a écrit :
> > Thank you for bringing that up, it's an interesting discussion. Here's
> > what I think reading your message. You're asking in fact two questions.
> > One of which might already have been answered by a few of our corporate
> > members/sponsors.
> > * LTS obviously means long term support. Both "support" and "long term"
> >      deserve careful consideration. I will in this email first focus on
> >      the term "support". If we speak of support, we must think of a
> >      support provider. In this case, does this mean we should think -as
> >      TDF, as a project- of providing professional support to users
> >      (obviously for a fee)? I don't think it's your idea, but I thought I
> >      would highlight the implications of such a matter.
> > * Have we studied what some of the existing support/service providers
> >      on LibreOffice already offer? I am not so sure but I'm under the
> >      impression that you can order support (and in this case a "LTS" kind
> >      of support) from Suse and Canonical (there are others) on one
> >      specific version of LibreOffice. That is, these vendors have one
> >      reference version of LibreOffice, say the 3.4.5, and they provide
> >      support and services on it making it their de facto LTS version.
> Yes, this is fine as they will guarantee that LibreNormal Ubuntu releases are supported for 18 
> months. Previous Ubuntu LTS
> (Long Term Support) releases are supported for 3 years on the desktop
> and 5 years on the server.  Starting with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, LTS releases
>   will be supported for 5 years on both the desktop and the server. Office will work on their systems and they will 
> take care of any dependencies and network-ability. But I don't think they would undertake any code revision and code 
> features into their LTS versions, not unless they have a large team of coders, which in this case would make them 
> "competitors" to our work/product (read "fork"). This would take us back to the days of the many 
> different versions of OOo -- the same situation that drew all of these different groups into one LibreOffice community.
>
> Leaving support/service providers to develop an LTS version, in my opinion, is not the right 
> strategy to adopt.
>
> > Back to your suggestion: do you mean we should relabel the older branch
> > "LTS", knowing that each of our releases in one branch really works
> > like a "service pack"? If we had the ability to provide incremental
> > updates (we will one day) we would have the feelings we have two
> > versions, and sometimes "maintenance updates". So at some point, say
> > the 3.5.4, we label it LTS, because we're close to open a new branch,
> > the 3.6, and we can suggest service providers to base their support
> > offers on this one for the time being. Did I get you right?
> No. I suggest that at some point, the TDF/LibreOffice should designate an LTS version for 
> large/small organizations/businesses. These would have developers oversee the fixing of bugs for a 
> fixed term (let's say a 3 year period) after which time another LTS version would be designated. 
> The LTS maintenance would NOT introduce any new functions to the distro but only service bug 
> correction. IMO, if any business entity would like to add any new functionality, then this is where 
> a support/service provider would step in and, hopefully, contribute any development of code back to 
> the community.
>
> I don't really think this is a new concept as even Mozilla-Firefox offers its own "Extended Support 
> Release (ESR)" version for corporate users[1]. When critical software packages are installed in large 
> corporations, a lot of energy in investment of time, training and documentation is expended in order to get 
> employees up to speed. LibreOffice certainly falls into this category (critical software -- wordprocessing 
> software). While Firefox ESR is being released initially for a period of approximately 1 year, IMO, I believe 
> they will ultimately find that a longer term will be necessary for these large organizations. As for a 
> version of LibreOffice LTS (or ESR), the impact of change for large organizations is even larger due to the 
> amount of training of staff of new features (even more so in the educational field with the training of 
> younger students).
>
> If we are looking to supplant MSO in the office place, we need to realize and accept the simple fact that the 
> amount of software/network testing as well as (and even more importantly) the training of staff for large 
> orgainizations is considerable. I sincerely doubt that a "one year"-term LTS for LibreOffice would 
> suffice; one year is just about enough time to test out the suite before it is even installed; most 
> organizations simply do not have the manpower to move any quicker.
>
> If we wish to compete in the large business market place we need to plan and develop more 
> strategically with our releases. Developing an LTS version will fix this. Otherwise, the choice 
> will remain MSO for office use, where MSO has a longer term of support with incremental changes for 
> bugfixes and where LibreOffice will remain marginalized as an office suite.
>
> > Best,
> >
> > -- Charles-H. Schulz Co-founder&  Director, The Document Foundation,
> > Zimmerstr. 69, 10117 Berlin, Germany Rechtsfähige Stiftung des
> > bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details:
> > http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint Mobile Number: +33 (0)6 98 65
> > 54 24.
> Cheers,
>
> Marc
>
> [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise/Firefox/ExtendedSupport:Proposal#Benefits
>
>
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