Dear Ming, quick answer (and I'm just speaking for myself here) - Ming H. wrote: > I am writing on behalf of a group of Chinese LO users. > Thx a lot for reaching out! Would be great to hear more about the use of LibreOffice in China. I wonder if you or other people from the chinese community would be willing to talk a bit about your experiences, perhaps in one of the next TDF virtual townhalls (or latest at our annual conference)? > We are thinking of providing extended builds of old releases for > which TDF has stopped making security updates, since many Chinese > Windows users opt to stay at old releases for various reasons and > are mostly unaware of the security consequences. > With my developer hat on, I don't really understand how providing updates for old releases would help, if the users are unwilling to upgrade in the first place. Or are there specific problems in newer LibreOffice releases, that affect Chinese users in particular? That's in any case an issue I would be very interested in learning more about. > My question is, is such a plan acceptable by the LO community in > general, and the developers from those commercial vendors in > particular? > I cannot speak for the community, nor for commercial vendors in general (albeit running a company that does provide LTS products for LibreOffice). That said, there is I think broad consensus in the community, that LibreOffice needs paid developers to maintain the code, and providing LTS versions is one way of generating revenues. As such, publishing free binaries from those vendor branches would certainly raise eyebrows, at least from the vendor who pays the developers maintaining that branch. There might be other ways to address your problem; it's also possible that the vendor who's branch you consider building would be fine with providing free binaries for the Chinese market (hard to answer in the abstract) - so don't take the above as a 'no', but rather as the start of a conversation to solve the (apparent!) issue. :) > Comments and advice are appreciated. And if the developer mailing > list is not the proper place for such inquiry, please redirect me to > the correct channels. > I think for the moment, it's a good place to start. I've copied the friendly TDF membership people, who are planning the townhall meetings & are always happy to strengthen connections with the global community. Let's hear what others think! All the best, -- Thorsten
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