[Sugar-devel] [SLOBS] Long-term support for Sugar (was: slobs... blah blah)

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

On Mon, 21 Sep 2009, Peter Robinson wrote:

>> Well, if we decide that future releases of Sugar should run ok on the 
>> next major release of CentOS, we cannot depend on later versions of 
>> python, gtk, etc.
>
> I'm not sure something like sugar which is (and should be) fast moving 
> mixes well with something like CentOS or its parent. At the beginning of 
> the v6 release cycle begins it will be fine but within 12 months I'm 
> sure everyone will want the features that are provided by the latest 
> release of gtk/glib/gstreamer/python/telepathy etc that just won't be 
> available in v6 so we en up in a situation we've been in before where we 
> either need to fork massive amounts of packages to get the features 
> everyone wants or moving back to Fedora. Both which will require lots of 
> work. I know what its like as I've spent lots and lots of hours getting 
> the changes merged upstream.

This is, of course, the whole reason for the RHEL/Fedora split in the 
first place.  They are two platforms that have two different requirements:

RHEL == very long term stability
Fedora == innovation

If it's a hard balance for Red Hat+Fedora (3100 employees, 15k volunteers) 
to strike -- then it will be an *enormously* difficult balance for Sugar 
Labs to strike.

One nice thing about a stable platform, though, is that it gives a very 
strong signal to your application development community: This Is The 
Platform.  Which is, in many cases, terribly inconvenient -- but for the 
most part, a great force for good.  So long as that platform has clear 
standards and everyone knows what they are.

Still, I think that SL needs to get to 1.0 on key features (collaboration) 
before we need to worry too much about stability.  SL is still in 
innovation mode, and will be for some time to come, I suspect.  (And yes, 
I know, there are thousands and thousands of SL "customers" in South 
America and elsewhere -- but the ongoing beta-ness of their experience 
proves the point, I think.)

--g

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