Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Trivia Question - Further Observation

Hi :)
My understanding is ... 

That TDF does keep a list of bugs to be fixed and wish-list items.  Triagers go 
through and assign various values such as "easy" (or difficult), "critical" (or 
"Low importance").  


Anyone can go through the list and pick something to work on.  Sometimes that 
'anyone' is a business with paid developers, sometimes it might be an individual 
that just loves the product and cares deeply about improving it or is interested 
in clever or practical or elegant coding.  Sometimes it might be a person 
learning coding under a mentor.  The anyone's (or their employees/contractors) 
can usually expect some help and support from other devs if they want it, 
especially if they intend to give the code to TDF.  


Having written the code they can then choose to keep it secret and just try to 
apply it to each new release (or new install) OR they can choose to give the 
code to TDF so that it can go through quality control, alpha-testing, 
beta-testing before being incorporated into the main product which all us users 
can alpha & beta test if we choose.  Typically this ends up covering a hugely 
diverse range of real-world hardware in combinations that would have most 
sensible lab-techs shuddering.  


The advantage to business 'anyones' of giving the new code fixes to TDF is that 
future releases of LO will already contain the fixes and they will have already 
undergone testing against the new release.  So the anyones don't have to 
re-apply their coding and then just hope it still works or go through their own 
quality testing against a limited number of machines.  


During this whole process the list of bugs and wish-list items gets updated 
tags.

As normal users we can choose whether to use the older stable releases such as 
3.3.0 - 3.3.2 (at the moment) or go for development releases to help bug-test 
the latest fixes and developments.  


My understanding of Fedora is that it is the development/testing branch of 
RedHat and that other projects keep an eye on what happens with Fedora in order 
to see what programs and stuff might be worth exploring for themselves.  Debian 
has a testing and a development branch that are available separately from their 
stable release.  SliTaz has a "Cooking" and a "Stable" release.  Most projects 
seem to have an edition that is not quite considered stable yet but hopefully 
will become the new stable version later.  I happen to like the way Ubuntu 
backports fixes to it's latest LTS release in a manner suggested by Kracked 
Press.  If LO had a sort-of LTS release in a similar way then it might help 
business users too.

Regards from
Tom :)





________________________________
From: webmaster for Kracked Press Productions <webmaster@krackedpress.com>
To: users@libreoffice.org
Sent: Mon, 30 May, 2011 14:45:31
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Trivia Question - Further Observation

On 05/30/2011 08:38 AM, Gianluca Turconi wrote:
> Hello Alex,
>
> In data 30 maggio 2011 alle ore 11:41:51, Alexander Thurgood 
> <alex.thurgood@gmail.com> ha scritto:
>
> > Ultimately, it is not merely the remarks that Michael made, that I may,
> > or may not, have misinterpreted. As I mentioned, it transpires from
> > other mailing lists, the dev irc channel, the bug reports, the decisions
> > to consider any given bug as a stopper or not.
>
> I've lurked this specific argument in the dev/steering discuss/French mailing 
> lists when you were commenting Meeks's statement.
>
> Now, I'm working with other people on this project:
>
> http://www.mail-archive.com/projects@libreoffice.org/msg00241.html
>
> During a lengthy and indeed very interesting discussion with Italo Vignoli, 
> Andrea Pescetti and others in the Italian discuss mailing list (for people who 
> knows Italian: 
> http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@it.libreoffice.org/msg00104.html ) , I 
> finally wondered: will the relashionship between the Community LibO *product* 
> and the commercially supported ones (Novell/Canonical/Red 
> Hat/put-here-your-preferred-corporation) be like the relationship between Fedora 
> Project Linux, a cutting edge and less stable version of Red Hat Enterprise 
> Linux, a very solid and corporate oriented linux distribution based on Fedora?
>
> I haven't a sure answer yet, but Andrea Pescetti pointed me to these Meeks 
> messages:
>
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2011-May/011424.html
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2011-April/011153.html
>
> and to the extremely important "Breathing Master" discussion here:
>
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2011-May/thread.html
>
> Those comments and discussions + yours + the relatively scarce news I know 
> about the LibO/TDF new business model based on paid certification for support 
> corporation, let me think that a Community Libo "cutting edge" product is here 
> to stay and may be a part of that business model.
>
> Well, *if* it's so, I'm simply not happy of such solution. It creates a viable 
> open ecosystem around LibO, for sure, but undermines the proverbial rock solid 
> stability I always experienced in OOo.
>
> Just my 2 eurocents, of course. ;-)
>
> Regards,
>
> Gianluca

I am no longer a programmer, but as a former business programmer:  Make ALL 
functions work as advertised!
I had to make every option work properly and "exactly" like it was wanted, or I 
get "bad news" from my bosses.
I even had to do such exact validation of input, I had to figure out every 
possible value that would be used as input for the entered fields.  That is easy 
for things like date and time but not so easy with number values.  But I was 
expected to have it completely working the first time it is use and every time 
it is used.

So we need to have a very stable package, and then need to have a cutting edge 
package off that, for those users who want to choose.

The issues with Impress that have been reported in the lists make me wonder 
about what is in the package that makes it work sometimes and not on others.  
Those type of on/off issues are hard to predict and test for.  I know that there 
are people out there scratching their heads trying to figure out what is the 
problem area of the code that need to be fixed.  But it will be fixed in due 
course.

I have not tried RC2, but I am told there are a lot of fixes and new stuff in 
that version.  As a "cutting edge" product, we keep adding new and better 
features the product.  As a "stable" product, people keep fixing the issues till 
everything that can be fixed is fixed "before" the new options are added.  Most 
business models, that do not deal with money or critical data, tend to be 
somewhere in the middle between those two product development "styles".

As an Open Source software package, any business development team can do their 
own work to fix issues that come up with their use of the package.  What I would 
like to see is a dialog between those business people and the people who are 
working on LibreOffice for TDF/LO.  This would need to be a two way dialog that 
lets TDF know what issues are out there and what they have done [or want done], 
and then have TDF people respond about what is being done on their end.  That 
way if there is a fix already made, the business people could get the revised 
code or maybe a compiled package with those issues fixed.

TDF/LO needs to be a part of the process so no matter how fixes the code, all 
users will benefit from those fixes.  Also, with the constructive dialog between 
business development teams and TDF/LO development teams, it would be better in 
the long run for keeping good opinions about LibreOffice by the corporate/ 
business users.

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