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

[Mario Rimann]

Hi

Am 09.11.12 09:53, schrieb Jigal van Hemert:
> The support period is/was indeed mentioned on the typo3.org site. You
> brought up the issue that the support period is different depending on
> when the site is delivered to your customer. I merely wanted to tell you
> that you could have sold a different support period. If you want to give
> each customer 5 years of free updates ("free" as in included in the
> contract) then you don't have to do anything yourself until the
> beginning of 2014 and after that you can backport bugfixes from later
> versions.
> You are not necessarily depending on what the community offers you for
> your customers.

Well, if you have a policy to only give "official" TYPO3 versions
without agency or customer specific changes within that core to your
customers, then you're depending on the official releases.

I know, we could throw away that own policy and start to build our
customer's websites on our own core - but so far, no one conviced us
that this will bring us or our customers any benefit - compared to a
huge pile of additional work to maintain our own core.

And as long as you don't have a person within the team that is able to
maintain that core (e.g. experienced in working in the core-code), then
you're depending on the official releases.

>> Then you still get me wrong. I'm just arguing that there is a *need*
>> from the target audience - and I feel you don't want to hear that and
>> always respond with "there's no (financial|human) resource to fullfil
>> this need".
> 
> I know that there is a "need", more a desire, for having LTS versions by
> several agencies (and others who offer TYPO3 services). Several people
> explained that this requires more resources and that is where things end
> so far.
> Other agencies (etc.) do not have such "need"; they use the latest
> stable branch and are able to sell upgrades in some way to their customers.
> 
> IMO it's now up to those who need this LTS to find a way to facilitate
> this.

I agree, it's now needed that those stand up and talk about their needs.
The problem so far was that I always had the impression that the
core-devs participating in that discussion did not want to hear about
that need at all and completely blocked every discussion right away
based on their fear to be getting more unpaid and uncool work to do.

> In the case of maintaining older branches it's just a matter of doing
> it. There are already scripts available which list all the issues that
> need backporting.

I'm perfectly aware of that. And I have spent many evenings with
backporting stuff to 4.7, 4.6 and 4.5 during the last few months (my
unpaid sparetime). At the beginning, that was a great success and there
was a real progress. But at some point in time, the whole "mission" I
was on got stuck somewhere in the review hell -> There are many many
things pending in the review queue. I started some actions to talk to
people or try to get something running by tweeting about it - but after
all the overall situation is unchanged. And I'm sorry, I cannot do more
than bringing stuff to Gerrit. I'm not even allowed to vote on my own
changes (which is correct IMHO). So tell me what more can I do to push
things forward in that regard?

> With development things don't happen quicker if you throw more people
> into the equation. If you have a few people dedicated to backporting
> changes that would help with more than 90% of the work involved.

See above, I don't agree: Just being dedicated about something does not
necessarily solve the problem.

Cheers,
Mario