[Zope-CMF] Re: RFC: backporting including python-package-product support to support Zope 2.8

[Tres Seaver]

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Martin Aspeli wrote:

> Lennart Regebro <regebro at ...> writes:
> 
> 
>>On 1/19/06, Martin Aspeli <optilude at ...> wrote:
>>
>>>On Thu, 19 Jan 2006 00:22:02 -0000, Philipp von Weitershausen
>>><philipp at ...> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I think one year is a pretty big span. Today, for example, you would not
>>>>start a project on Zope 2.8. You would do it with Zope 2.9 which is
>>>>going to get bugfixes until the end of 2006.
>>>
>>>Not if you spend 18 months developing your application :-/
>>
>>Well, in that case you should be able to at some time during that
>>process, switch to a new Zope version... I do understand that Zope
>>2.9.0 may not be something you want to depend on, but most likely
>>there will be a 2.9.1 out by May, so maybe you can consider switching
>>then?
> 
> 
> *I* wouldn't mind. Heck, I'd probably take 2.9.0 beta.
> 
> But the number one concern for a lot (if not most) people who consider using
> open source when there are commercial alternatives is support and
> maintainability. If the competition says, yeah, sure, this Zope thing's great,
> but if you start developing against version 2.8 now, by the time you're done,
> your version will be discontinued, oh, and by the way, you can buy support from
> us for 10 years at least... it's not the easiest of things to argue with.

People who have those kind of worries should expect to *pay* for
longer-term support than the project itself provides.  Anything else is
suicide for the project.

>>>I do understand that it's hard to maintain three Zope 2 releases at the
>>>same time (jebus). I'm just worried that this policy, especially if
>>>explicit, would make Zope FUD a bit easier.
>>
>>Zope is in a period of rapid change now, and that is indeed scary. ;)
>>It's hard to avoid that, I think, without putting a huge break on the
>>changing.
> 
> 
> Absolutely - it's a double edged sword, though I certainly don't want to see
> Zope's maturation process slow down. I'm just trying to raise some awareness
> that for a lot of decision makers, the latest and greatest features matter less
> than the security that their application won't break in the future.


Zope Corp. is willing (or has been, anyway;  I can't speak for them any
longer) \to sell support for released versions of Zope.  Under such a
contract, the supporting company would arrange to get critical
(stability / security-related) bugfixes backported, if the
version-under-support was no longer the actively developed version.

Anyone expecting to get *that* kind of support for free is smoking
crack, given the size of the Zope community and its general willingness
to upgrade as needed.


Tres.
- --
===================================================================
Tres Seaver          +1 202-558-7113          tseaver at palladion.com
Palladion Software   "Excellence by Design"    http://palladion.com
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