Re: Platform recommendation

I think a lot depends on what is meant by "supported".  In general,
platforms are supported with Red Carpet (clients) when Ximian plans to
release other software (e.g. Evolution, Connector, XD2) for those
platforms.  If we're not planning on releasing other software for that
platform, there's little point to our supporting the platform in
question with Red Carpet.

The question of what platforms will be supported for Evolution, XD2,
etc. is chiefly a marketing decision (though promising support has a
major impact on engineering), and we like to avoid painting ourselves
into corners.  In order to avoid vapor accusations, we generally don't
promise support for something until it's ready, though we sometimes
mention that we're making a priority of adding support for a platform
that we supported in an earlier version.  The only current platform in
that situation is Solaris 9, which is overdue for Evolution and
Connector support.  Given that we don't distribute updates from Sun
through Red Carpet, this may not be especially useful news for Red
Carpet users.

Generally, if we announce support for a platform, we typically support
that platform in the long term, i.e. until the time the OS vendor no
longer offers updates for that platform, after which Red Carpet tends to
become less useful.  Red Carpet offers updates from the OS vendor or
from Ximian.  The OS vendor updates are grabbed from mirrors and don't
demand a lot of resources from us.  Ximian packages can be a different
story, and it's possible that we'd drop Evolution support (for example)
for a given platform (excepting perhaps security fixes) while updates
were still available from the OS vendor.

In general, we avoid saying that we'll *never* support a certain
platform (unless there are technical reasons for it that make it
unusually impractical, and we've been known to work around those in some
cases).  In theory, we can add support for an unsupported platform at
any time we decide it's in our best interest to do so (once engineering
has had a chance to do what's necessary).

Much of this may be historical, though.  It remains to be seen how the
Ximian-Novell-SUSE interaction will play out in the long term.

As I'm not in a position to make promises, take anything I say on the
matter with a grain of salt.  I think I've done a pretty good job of
avoiding making promises, since it's not my job to make promises, but
this may explain some of why we try to avoid making such promises.

-Mark Gordon

On Mon, 2004-02-02 at 13:35 -0500, Jason Frisvold wrote:
> Mark,
> 
> 	Any idea if Ximian/Novell will release an actual list of what will be
> supported for the long term?
> 
> On Mon, 2004-02-02 at 12:58, Mark Gordon wrote:
> > Well, considering that Ximian and SUSE are both now owned by Novell,
> > it's safe to say that SUSE platforms are most likely to be better
> > supported in the long term.
> > 
> > While the Red Carpet server can't be browsed, many of the channels are
> > effectively mirrored on ftp.ximian.com, which provides a pretty good
> > idea of what's available for what platform.  Note that the existence of
> > a directory on ftp for a given platform doesn't mean that the platform
> > in question has been updated recently, though stale software for
> > unsupported platforms is mostly found in legacy directories, e.g.
> > ximian-desktop rather than xd2.
> > 
> > -Mark Gordon
> > 
> > On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 08:20 +1100, Paul McGarry wrote:
> > > I'm thinking of updating my OS (currently RH 7.2) and am wondering if
> > > anyone from Ximian has recommendation for which would be best for long
> > > term XD support and also development projects like Mono. Is there a way
> > > of browsing a list of the channels currently available for different
> > > distros?
> > > 
> > > I realise that part of what I'm asking is forward looking but I'm just
> > > asking for a knowledgeable opinion rather than an official Ximian
> > > statement.
> > > 
> > > Thanks,
> > > 
> > > Paul

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