[Kolab-devel] Call for participation (was: Re: Kolab 3.1)

[Jeroen van Meeuwen]

On Wednesday, October 09, 2013 02:18:55 PM Tormen wrote:
> On 09/10/13 11:49, Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
> > No, it's not your English, I agree with the general sentiment the
> > base repository *should* allow one to install - and it does - but
> > for our reference platform only.
> 
> Your reference platform is SuSE I suppose?
> 

Our reference platform is Enterprise Linux version 6, for which 
corporate customers might choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and community 
might choose CentOS.

We (Kolab Systems staff) have intimate familiarity with this platform, 
its predecessor Fedora, its processes, its guidelines, its twirls, drink 
beers with the people running the project, developing, building, testing 
and supporting the distribution regularly, on multiple continents, as we 
(Kolab Systems staff) have been active contributors for a very long time 
(and still are).

The milestones for a release being called "stable" is, as such, based on 
our experiences installing, configuring and running Kolab on this 
reference platform. Our level of familiarity helps us to do so 
efficiently and effectively, and churn out high-quality packages at a 
speed that matches the speed with which we continue to develop the only 
truly Free Software groupware solution in existence.

This situation will likely continue to be like that until either I (like 
I have for the majority of packages now, and have in the past) or 
someone else (a community member, a group of community members and/or 
potentially another Kolab Systems staff member) can be held accountable, 
and/or holds themselves accountable, and/or feels responsible, and/or is 
on the receiving end of issues with packages. For now though, any 
package that is not for Enterprise Linux 6 is provided as a courtesy, 
because a very large part of our community uses Debian(-like) operating 
systems, so we put in the work we put in to keep our dearest Debian 
campers happy campers.

It's a tremendous amount of work to continue to develop a groupware 
solution, and it is a tremendous amount of work to "just" turn it in to 
packages.

To have these packages meet the standards of no less than 7 different 
upstream Linux and GNU/Linux distribution projects, I'm sure you can 
imagine, is a task one cannot reasonably expect us (Kolab Systems) to do 
for you (the community), so I therefore urge you (the community as a 
whole) to participate and collaborate to either whatever (only limited) 
extent you might think you're capable of (it is more than you think), or 
to the fullest extent of what you can do while still enjoying yourself 
and reaching your personal goals.

> I just wanted to make sure that you are aware of this constraint for
> your debian repos :)
> Otherwise this is of no personal importance for me and I am a happy
> camper to get
> my kolab on Debian with one nice install command!
> 
> Thanks again for your Debian support! :))
>

You're more than welcome ;-)

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen

-- 
Systems Architect, Kolab Systems AG

e: vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com
m: +44 74 2516 3817
w: http://www.kolabsys.com

pgp: 9342 BF08