On Sat, Nov 02, 2002 at 12:39:25PM -0600, Les Mikesell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: "Gordon Rowell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > As for devinfo - I too worry about where it is heading. I would like > > to see development activity, but the list has been extremely quiet on > > that front. > > It is extremely difficult to take this statement seriously when on the > one hand you (understandably) won't commit resources to making > it possible to back-port outside development work to non-current > releases, and on the other hand do not provide any information > about where your own development is heading or time frames > for release. This means that any outside development that > interacts with or depends on any existing SME framework will very > likely be obsolete before it is finished.
Hang on a moment. We try, as much as possible, to maintain backwards compatibility and provide smooth upgrades. I happen to think we've done a pretty good job of this over many releases. When we intentionally break compatibility for some reason (e.g. moving from Obtuse SMTPD to mailfront), we give clear prior warning to devinfo. We automatically migrated all supported features during upgrades - that's what our customers expect. We have no way of knowing what other uses have been made of the software - the best we can do is let the developer community know that we will be breaking compatibility. Code written for e-smith 4.0 (and probably before) should happily run on SME Server 5.6 - we haven't removed backwards compatibility. You don't have to write in FormMagick for 5.5/5.6 - we advise that you do, but that is a different issue from our expending the effort to back-port. We put that effort in to porting our panels to FormMagick as we also needed to provide them in French and English for 5.5 and other languages in the future. However, the previous versions of the panels would still run, but would be limited to English only. We provide all of the source and packages to back-port FormMagick to releases before 5.5 and the 5.6 mailfront changes to 5.5 (or before). It's all GPL and it's all there. What we are not providing is effort to build, test and integrate, either personally or with our Mitel hats on. I'm not sure what else you expect. > No one knows when you will release your next version or what it > will contain - and you have made that policy very clear. > [...] I stand by that policy and it's true of most other vendors. We provide developer previews which show what is likely to be in the coming release. The roadmap for future releases is influenced by many factors, internal and external. The best way to get your feature on that roadmap is to contribute packages which are sufficiently developed to easily integrate - Dan Brown's IMP/horde/turba contribs are one such example - they slotted into 5.5 with minimal integration effort. I know you want better LDAP integration. So do we, but it's more likely to happen if you contribute the code in a close to production ready state. Why don't you start up an LDAP integration project on devinfo? Gordon -- Gordon Rowell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Director, Engineering Network Server Solutions Group http://www.e-smith.com/ Mitel Networks Corporation http://www.mitel.com/smallbusiness -- Please report bugs to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] (only) to discuss security issues Support for registered customers and partners to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Searchable archive at http://www.mail-archive.com/devinfo%40lists.e-smith.org
