Re: OpenOffice installation?

Once upon a time, a long time ago, Ximian (or was it Helix Code?) was a
small start-up that wished to avoid antagonizing any of the distro
vendors.  To that end, among others, we expressed a large degree of
vendor-neutrality.  One early version of Ximian Desktop was available
for Linux versions from seven different vendors, plus Solaris.  Counting
different versions from those vendors, it included support for 18
distinct platforms.

Several things have changed since then:

- As our release engineering process matured, it became more demanding
to support such a wide range of platforms.  Simultaneously, we were able
to look at the marketing data for an early Ximian Desktop product (not
to be confused with XD2), which was available for, among other
platforms: LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog Linux, Caldera, TurboLinux, and Debian.
We support many of these any more, neither with XD2 nor with
Evolution/Connector, based entirely on their lack of apparent customer
base (not to be confused with a lack of *user* base, which Debian
certainly has).  Our current desktop, XD2, is supported under a very
narrow range of platforms, from only two vendors: Red Hat and SUSE
(initially 4 versions total, now 6), with support for
Evolution/Connector on platforms for a few other vendors (Mandrake and
Sun, only one version from each).  All these changes were made before
the purchase of Ximian by Novell, let alone the purchase of SUSE by
Novell.

- Red Hat Linux has been canceled.  The remaining Red Hat platforms will
consist of a community-supported unstable platform, impractical for us
to support and which Red Hat identifies as being a hobbyist platform
rather than a target for ISVs, and an expensive but well-supported
enterprise version, for which installing something as big as XD2 would
certainly void the support contract.

- Sun is now shipping Gnome for Solaris, which reduced the demand for
Ximian to do so.

- GARNOME and similar projects have made it easier for members of the
community to build their own Gnome packages.

- Indeed, we got bought.  Novell now owns both Ximian and SUSE.  That
being the case, we're no long as distro-neutral as we once were, and
there's nothing wrong with that.  Red Hat and Sun contribute to Gnome as
well, and I don't think anyone expects them to be entirely
distro-neutral.  Ximian just hasn't been in the same position before.

As for XD2 in particular: if you want to run XD2, you need to run a
supported platform from one of two vendors: Red Hat or SUSE.  *This has
not changed*.  The only change since June has been to add support for a
few SUSE distributions (SUSE Linux 9.0 and SUSE Linux Desktop 1.0) that
were based on Gnome 2.2.

This brings me to a major point: XD2 isn't exactly bleeding-edge any
more.  It was released on June 2 of last year, which was a long time ago
in Linux desktop terms.  XD2 is based on Gnome 2.2, and the current
stable version of Gnome is 2.6.  Newer versions of pretty much all
distros (except maybe Debian testing, which I haven't checked lately)
will be based on 2.4, *at least*.  That would make XD2 a *downgrade* for
any newer distros.  This leads to the following inevitable conclusion:

XD2 won't be supported on any more distros.  Ever.  Not from Red Hat.
Not from SUSE.  Not from anybody else.  It just wouldn't make sense for
someone running a newer Gnome version to install XD2.	

Modulo Connector and some of the XD2-Professional add-ons (proprietary
browser plug-ins and the like, e.g. acroread), source packages are
available for all of XD2.  If you want our themes, our wallpaper, our
patches (which are typically submitted upstream, except perhaps for some
branding-related patches that we know wouldn't be accepted), they're on
our ftp site.  The Open Source community shouldn't care about the list
of platforms for which we provide support or binaries, as long as the
source code is available and the license is reasonable.

Now, a slightly *different* question: what would I recommend as a
platform for people who want to run Ximian desktop products in the
future?  SUSE is certainly the safest bet.  That's the real question I
answered earlier.  I fail to see how it is in any way controversial.

Over time, one should expect the distinction between Ximian and SUSE to
become increasingly blurred, and that's ignoring the distinction between
either of them and Novell.

-Mark Gordon

P.S. Yup, I work for Novell.

On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 12:54 -0400, jack wallen wrote:
> just playing devil's advocate here but couldn't that be look upon as a
> move simply because of the monetary ties between SuSE, Ximian, and
> Novell? 
> 
> the reason i ask that is you have an employee of Ximian - Mark Gordon -
> (which is owned, i'm assuming) by Novell now suggesting to users that if
> you want to use XD2 you should switch to SuSE.
> 
> i would think in the Open Source community that would look pretty bad.
> 
> On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 12:54, D. D. Brierton wrote:
> > On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 16:23, jack wallen wrote:
> > > i know this question is asked constantly but when is ximian going to
> > > start supporting Fedora Core? is this ever going to happen?????
> > 
> > Never. See the list archive for a message from Mark Gordon of Ximian on
> > April 6th entitled "Re: Fedora or <Brand X>?"
> > 
> > Best, Darren
> -- 
> ::jack wallen, jr:::::::::::::::::::::::gender is one::
> ::are you ready to take the:::::::::::::::::::::funky::
> ::hayride up to 100 miles an hour?::::::::::continuum::

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