What does Zimbra have against OpenSUSE

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by langs

LTS doesn't magically have vendor support, it comes from the exact same place as the non-LTS version. Canonical make that very clear, the support options are exactly the same for both, and both are community distros with a commerical sponsor that is all. LTS is just on a different track, the support options however are no different at all.

I don't quite understand what point you're trying to prove. The same sort of support isn't available for CentOS whether you want to call it Commercial Sponsor or Vendor - neither of those options exist. Who pays for development of Ubuntu, who provides support for Ubuntu?

This from the Canonical web page:

We achieve our mission by:

* delivering Ubuntu, the world's best free software platform
* ensuring its availability to everyone
* supporting it with high quality professional service and engineering offerings
* facilitating the continued growth and development of the free software community

Originally Posted by langs

Don't quite see how you got that wrong.

Well let's give you bonus point for a trite comment, we'll call you the winner shall we?

As I've already said, this has been discussed many times in the forums - read the posts and see if the policy has changed.

[Bill Brock]

Even with the word free, FOSS provides a return to ZImbra. Most bugs are probably reported by FOSS community. FOSS allows for exposure. A lot of their NE sales probably start with FOSS users.

As Phoenix said, it costs alot to support a distro. If Zimbra feels they are not getting a return on that distro, they are going to drop it like a hot potato.

Open SuSE is no longer giving them a return. Too few downloads, too few contributions from Open SuSE users to the community....

They still support the paid version of SuSE because they probably have NE users on that distro.

Don't think Zimbra is doing anything out of the goodness of their heart. FOSS is still all about money. And thus no more Open SuSE.

[langs]

Bill Ubuntu is a fork of debian, not some newly created distro.

From the Ubuntu Website;

Ubuntu is a community developed, Linux-based operating system

It is controlled by the Community Council and not by Canonical, you can get the exact same levels of support for either, weather you like to admit it or not. Remember "Ubuntu builds on the foundations of Debian architecture and infrastructure, with a different community and release process."

You are just discriminating against a type of commercial support, is Mr Shuttleworth giving Zihoo kick backs?

I can accept that you say hey we like Ubuntu better and we have a relationship with Canonical, but don't say it's cause Ubuntu has vendor support and CentOS doesn't becuase thats just not true.. you can get Fujitsu, Unisys, and IBM all to support CentOS if you are willing to pay for it. It'd also be fair to say Ubuntu, like Fedora before it is a good lead in platform as alot of people use it on their personal systems, thus it exposes more people to the Zimbra product. I just don't buy your reason and again Bill you say your reason is mentioned all over these forums, please point 2 cases of this out to me as I'm yet to see this reason repeated any where else.

BTW have I mentioned dropping RHEL4 support is dumb? Bill Brock is very right with regard to FOSS, but as someone who's paid up for 5 years on NE and been using it for the last 2+ I feel paying customers should get consulted and listened to as well. I can feel my advocacy waning, it's hard to sell people on ZCO when the company behind it has deaf ears, and their accounts teams are forgetful.

[Bill Brock]

My last post wasn't meant to be a cut to the Zimbra team. They are now owned by a publicly traded company and thus every decision management makes MUST be based on the objective to maximize the value of the company for its shareholders. Any other action is illegal, a breach in the fiduciary duty they have to their shareholders.

When they were privately held they were able to do things "out of the goodness of their heart". They simply no longer have that luxury.

I personally think it sucks that Open SuSE will no longer be supported. But that is capitalism at its finest. So I either look at a distro that is supported or move to another product. Just the cold hard facts of life.

[soxfan]

This thread has kind of split into three topics: OpenSuSE support, CentOS support, and RHEL4 support. While I would love to see official support for CentOS I'm not going to get into the debate again that has been beaten dead in these forums. However, unless or until I am proven wrong I will continue to treat CentOS as the equivalent to RHEL, especially when it concerns Zimbra installs. That said, I'm very disappointed to see that RHEL4 is EOL. Can someone from Zimbra clarify what this means? Does it mean that there will be no RHEL4 releases for version 6 or that this is the last version that will have support for RHEL4? I have to think this is going to affect a HUGE portion of installed Zimbra sites. I understand that Zimbra can't continue to support and have releases for every Linux/Mac OS out there, but in my opinion RHEL4 is still very viable. If Zimbra is looking to cut back on supported OS'es I would recommend getting rid of Fedora altogether. Fedora has always been considered somewhat "bleeding edge", and much less of a "server" distribution than other distros out there.

[langs]

Soxfan my understanding is there will be no release 6 for RHEL4 and that they may stop providing support for it as well as a platform. If thats so I agree the inpact will be major for a large number of people.

My account executive is apparently getting me a answer from the Zimbra Support Manager.

[rainer_d]

The problem is most likely that building Zimbra on RHEL4 is becoming more and more difficult, over time.
I can see why people would want to stay on RHEL4 - because updating RHEL in-place is indeed horrible.
We've only just started with Zimbra, but I hope that once RHEL5-support is phased out, the server-to-server migration-tools are well developed...
;-)

[mmorse]

As I see it, PMweb really is a little out of date; for instance we have no OpenSUSE 64-bit. We'll get someone to update it.

I think the confusion stems around our definition on PMweb's help page: "EOL - The release is end of life'd meaning that it is no longer supported. Customers are strongly encouraged to migrate to a newer version of the ZCS."

Works on the outside release numbers, but when interpreted on the platforms list the problem is that we've used that same EOL marking at times to specify either:
A) "This is the last release that we'll build it for."
B) "We are not going to produce builds for this version (NE or FOSS as noted) at all with this release."

To make matters worse our history in PMweb doesn't help. For instance with 5.0 we marked Mac 10.4 PPC as EOL when it was really sunset, and shouldn't even been listed under platforms at all, as we never released a FRANKLIN build of it. Same with Debian 3.1, or Mandriva being GA & EOL in one major release.

(Yes, EOL, vs un-supported, vs sunset, vs discontinued vs whatever other term - could/should really be separate definitions and consistent.)

Not-authoritative (PMweb will get updated), but I foresee it being:

Builds ending with 5.0.12 (or last 5.0.x):
- OpenSUSE 10
Sorry Bill B.

Predict ends with 6.0.12 (ie: last 6.0.x):
- RHEL 4 32/64bit
- Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS 32/64bit
- SLES 10 (32/64-bit)
- Mac OS X 10.4 (Intel)
- Debian 4
- Fedora 7

I know at that point RHEL 4 will still have 'phase 3' support, and Ubuntu 6 a whole year. (No one in the forums figured RHEL4/Ubuntu6 would go past ZCS 6.5.12 anyways, and as they're marked EOL for GNR on PMWeb, 6.0.12 is not too hard of a stretch.)

Also realize that we won't pull existing version specific code, build logic, and defs, so it will be easier to produce community releases for these probably well into ZCS 7.0. Infact, it's an awesome time for the opensource builders to shine.

Some of you will breathe a sigh of relief that RHEL 4 EOL will probably mean the last release we'll build it for is 6.0.12 not 6.0.0, while others I'm sure will scream bloody murder over sunset of SLES 10 on NE a year from now with ZCS 6.5, or Debian 4 on FOSS. I totally understand. Always welcome to comment as you see fit - just keep in mind we're fluid, and that list is really in regards to just current platforms; certainly voice your support for Debian 5 & SLES 11 when given the opportunity. I've run OpenSUSE as a desktop and will miss it's departure along with the rest of it's fans. We have lots of things to consider when we discontinue one build (or add another, if we think the platform list has shrunk enough) - I will definitely note respective viewpoints and defend your thoughts where I can.
Remember it's a guess, take it with a grain of salt. Plus I've been known to eat my words a few times

[Bill Brock]

Everything has an EOL. It's the migration of Zimbra from my current distro to a new one that worries me. I am by no means a Linux expert and migrating the whole Zimbra deployment from SuSE to say Ubuntu will probably eat my lunch.

I'm sure we won't see a FOSS migration utility for the same reason we aren't going to see Open SuSE support.

So this brings me back to the age old question I struggled with when I went with Zimbra. Which is best, proprietary or FOSS. Since migration will be a nightmare and the Documents feature in Zimbra ain't what it should be I'll probably migrate back to 602Lan or take a look at Merak. One thing I won't miss is the bug after bug that keeps creeping in with every new revision of Zimbra.

[Jbrabander]

mmorse,

Well put. After reading through this thread, there's a lot of anger and confusion as to what's going on, when, and why. And I agree that the definitions for EOL, discontinued, etc. need to be clearer. My thoughts (for an example):

After version 6.0.12, no more new versions for RHEL 4 (discontinue). Email and phone support for RHEL 4 issues will continue for 12 months after 6.0.12 is released (sunset). After that year is up, no support for RHEL 4 (EOL).

There's so much grief too over why this OS is supported and that one isn't. We're running CentOS, running the RedHat version of Zimbra, and getting along fine. (your mileage may vary) It seems to be a bit blurry as to what's a "commercially supported" Linux and what isn't. Which brings about "why is his Linux supported for Zimbra and mine isn't?"

Of course, that's one reason I think Linux hasn't really taken off in the "non-nerd" world...too many flavors of Linux all trying to do the same general things.