[TYPO3-core] Proposal for the upcoming Roadmap and LTS

[Xavier Perseguers]

Hi,

> Well, you're comparing bananas to oranges here: If I buy a new car
> (independent of it's "version"), it will always have the same n years of
> warranty. It doesn't matter on which moment I sign the contract to buy it.
> 
> With TYPO3 the "remaining maintenance duration" depends on the moment a
> project is done and which version is used for it as outlined in my
> previous mail - the customer doesn't always get the same duration of
> maintenance with his website.

Well, that's true for any software actually. If you happen to buy an OS
when it gets out (say Windows XP in 2001 to have known rules), you ended
up having 12 years of support whereas if you bought it later, your
"warranty" became less and less.

This is why most software vendors provide a free upgrade if you
unfortunately bought their product short from the release of the next
version.

> But I'm asking for a transition path to upgrade from one LTS version to
> the next LTS version. 6 months overlapping time is too short IMHO and
> therefore I think the next LTS should be coming better soon than late.

The transition path is already existing, it's the install tool's upgrade
wizard. But the upgrade path for the extensions is of course up to the
extension authors.

In the end I really think this is a problem to be tackled by the
association if it ever should be official because as already said
agencies are free to use their own package of TYPO3. This is even easier
now that we use git.

The world of software cannot be compared to the world of goods that you
buy once for all. A hammer will work forever unless it gets broken.

Chrome chose the automatic update. I really doubt you will get a fix for
an older version if there's a bug. So one could think of selling some
sort of license for TYPO3. Of course it's free but your agency is free
to ask for a fee for security upgrades, minor upgrades and possibly
major upgrades. Clients should understand that they get a _software_ to
manage their website, it's not static at all, they are able to edit it
from anywhere, ... and a software requires maintenance which they could
manage themselves with some sort of panel or a direct FTP access at
their own risk or delegate this (paid) work to the agency.

Don't take it wrong! I totally understand the concern described in this
thread but the problem is simply time/money. I would even say that it
should not be the job of the Core team which should concentrate on
making TYPO3 evolve and take care of just a few previous versions.
Actually anyone could provide an extended warranty time for previous
versions of TYPO3, just as you are allowed to import packages from
unofficial sources when you run a Linux machine. Of course, having it
"officially" available would be cool.

Cheers
Xavier

-- 
Xavier Perseguers
Release Manager TYPO3 4.6

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