[BlueOnyx:15821] Re: BlueOnyx 5207R/5208R released

[Chris Gebhardt - VIRTBIZ Internet]

Hi Michael,
Sorry I'm late to the party on this.
On 8/26/2014 9:09 PM, Michael Stauber wrote:
> After a grace period I would like to discontinue 5107R and 5108R
> entirely by publishing an update via YUM that upgrades them to 5207R and
> 5208R respectively.
>
> These upgrades via YUM work pretty well and generally there is little
> that speaks against it. It's just the GUI that gets replaced with the
> newer one. But I'll listen to contrary points of view.
>
> The date I'm oogling for this mandatory update is 1st October 2014.

I'm respectful of the fact that you bear most of the heavy lifting for 
the maintenance of the project.  Reducing unnecessary burden is a great 
idea, and I am very supportive.

I might submit that October 1, barely more than a month away, seems 
precious little time for a fairly extreme move.   With such a short 
announcement window it could feel rather arbitrary.  My concern is that 
when moves such as this appear arbitrary, that diminishes the feeling of 
legitimacy that users might have toward BlueOnyx.   Since we are 
enjoying the momentum of the project at a fairly high level right now, I 
hesitate to put that in jeopardy.

Perhaps we may consider a somewhat more gentle nudge that requires the 
user's approval on the upgrade, but lays out the consequences of 
refusing the upgrade.   That goes something like this:

1: BlueOnyx announces the official release of 5207/8R, which replaces 
5107/8R.
2: With the new release in official production, 5107/8R will be phased 
out.   No maintenance will occur on the old GUI after ________.  I 
suggest that date to be December 31, 2014.
3: A yum update is pushed to 5107/8R boxes that adds a pop-up or a 
replacement of the news page (effective now!) that gives the alert and 
the option to UPDATE NOW or IGNORE.
4: UPDATE NOW option executes script to yum update to 5207/8R, while 
IGNORE simply does nothing.
5: For those who ignore and do not upgrade, they continue to see the 
announcement upon login until January 1, 2015.   At that time, the 
announcement changes to mention that they are now operating on an 
obsolete version of BlueOnyx.  We encourage an upgrade now, because it's 
fantastic and wonderful and, oh yes, official support for their version 
has ended.   Would you like to upgrade now?  It's free.  The water's 
fine, come on in.   They can still ignore, but we're making them well 
aware of the consequences.

While that extends your heavy lifting for another 3 months, I feel it is 
a more graceful and, may I say, professional approach.

It also has the added benefit of ensuring that the liability for 
upgrading (or not) is squarely with the system administrator.  They need 
to make sure that they are ready for the update.  If they've banged in 
some odd plugin, or managed to hack an old PKG into the system, or made 
modifications of their own outside official channels, we're not 
arbitrarily stomping on that.   They can still run the old GUI, but 
they're going to lose ongoing support and will get nagged at every login 
(and every click over to Server Management).

I think that this approach is potentially valuable to the project, as 
well as potentially valuable to Michael, who as I've mentioned bears the 
great majority of the burden of providing updates and responding to any 
ensuing fallout.  After all, the upgrade is non-reversible.

Microsoft is a favorite punchline, but this is similar to their (most 
recent) approach with Windows XP.  Sure, fellas, you can continue to run 
it.  But we're going to make really REALLY sure that you know we think 
it's a bad idea and we feel you should upgrade right now.

-- 
Chris Gebhardt
VIRTBIZ Internet Services
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