Comment Re:LTS Release? (Score 1) 315
Hence why you hire more devs specifically to support LTS versioning and incorporate higher service contract prices to account for the extra overhead you have to incur to support it. The success of that will also still greatly depend upon what they define as LTS. An "extended by three years" timeline of support still won't be long enough for some businesses. One company I consulted for decided to turn down implementing Oracle and instead just bought out a small-time ERP shop for the sole reason that Oracle wasn't willing to sell them a guarantee for 10-years of support on the version they were pitching (10g at the time I think?).
The same can be said for why IE6, despite it's legion of flaws and security shortcomings, was so loved by big business (though not necessarily by their IT divisions). There were never more than a few foreseeable minor changes to account for (i.e. pay for development) and they had a nice little dedicated support service to call in case they needed help with something whether that was talking directly to Microsoft or a multitude of support firms that handled IE6 support as a 3rd party solutions.
Those are the kinds of things that enterprises are looking for. High degrees of reliability, and increasingly low costs. Super speedily optimized runtimes, flashy graphics, and expanded functionality are nice, but ultimately tertiary in nature and even anathema if they mess around with reliability or cost. Security fixes are considered secondary and still way more important than the tertiary things, however they likewise must always avoid messing with reliability and cost if the enterprise is going to be happy about it.
It is in that light that I have a hard time identifying with IT shops that bitch and moan about FF doing wonky versioning shenanigans that all of a sudden break their apps. FF is and never has been designed for the enterprise mindset (most of the open-source world is like that for that matter). Now... if they were developing an eFirefox that was designed around the enterprise mindset and pulled a stunt like this, then ya I'd roast 'em too. Sure it sucks that there hasn't really been any solid LTS browser solution since IE6, but that doesn't mean businesses all of a sudden get free reign to treat all the vendors like LTS vendors if those vendors aren't specifically wanting/trying to fill that space. I see the lack of LTS browser vendors as a prerogative for enterprises to put pressure on in-house development and 3rd party web app vendors to enforce standards and more extensive quality assurance so that their software is almost guaranteed to last beyond a version number or two of any given browser.
The same can be said for why IE6, despite it's legion of flaws and security shortcomings, was so loved by big business (though not necessarily by their IT divisions). There were never more than a few foreseeable minor changes to account for (i.e. pay for development) and they had a nice little dedicated support service to call in case they needed help with something whether that was talking directly to Microsoft or a multitude of support firms that handled IE6 support as a 3rd party solutions.
Those are the kinds of things that enterprises are looking for. High degrees of reliability, and increasingly low costs. Super speedily optimized runtimes, flashy graphics, and expanded functionality are nice, but ultimately tertiary in nature and even anathema if they mess around with reliability or cost. Security fixes are considered secondary and still way more important than the tertiary things, however they likewise must always avoid messing with reliability and cost if the enterprise is going to be happy about it.
It is in that light that I have a hard time identifying with IT shops that bitch and moan about FF doing wonky versioning shenanigans that all of a sudden break their apps. FF is and never has been designed for the enterprise mindset (most of the open-source world is like that for that matter). Now... if they were developing an eFirefox that was designed around the enterprise mindset and pulled a stunt like this, then ya I'd roast 'em too. Sure it sucks that there hasn't really been any solid LTS browser solution since IE6, but that doesn't mean businesses all of a sudden get free reign to treat all the vendors like LTS vendors if those vendors aren't specifically wanting/trying to fill that space. I see the lack of LTS browser vendors as a prerogative for enterprises to put pressure on in-house development and 3rd party web app vendors to enforce standards and more extensive quality assurance so that their software is almost guaranteed to last beyond a version number or two of any given browser.
