RFC: Bazaar Web site Home Page Redesign

[Martin Pool]

2009/8/6 Ben Finney <ben+bazaar at benfinney.id.au>:
> "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> writes:
>
>> You absolutely :-) need an exit ramp for "Launchpad", large enough
>> to make it clear that use of one is really enhanced by the other.
>
> I would recommend against doing this, actually. There is much negative
> feeling (among those I talk VCSen with) around the perception that
> Bazaar is somehow tied to use of Launchpad, whereas Mercurial and Git
> are less restrictive because they have no such ties.
>
> Adding such a thing prominently on the website would reinforce this
> “Bazaar! Launchpad! Canonical! All the same thing, innit!” that turns a
> lot of people away from Bazaar-the-VCS.

Launchpad and Bazaar like each other a lot, one might say, and many
(though not all) people who use one, use both.

If there's either a concern, or in some few cases intentional FUD,
being coy about it won't help.  We don't need to directly address it
point-by-point but we do need to speak about the issue of how they
work together.

If someone comes to the web site having heard something about
Launchpad and Bazaar it'll be weird to not mention Launchpad at all.
After reading they should feel they understand how they fit together,
and have an idea of whether or not they'd want to use Launchpad.

At the architectural/strategic level the idea that Canonical will make
two tools that work well together is settled.  If there are particular
points where Bazaar's overly tied to Launchpad we can certainly talk
about them.  I've often asked  that things like --fixes should be done
in an extensible way, even if the first implementation is for
Launchpad.  Like anything else, the extensibility interfaces are not
always perfect in the first cut, but we can talk about how to improve
them.

The kind of points I'd like to make here are (just off the top of my
head, and not to be copied in directly):

 * You can don't need a central host to use Bazaar.  There are
benefits.  You can use Launchpad, Savannah, Sourceforge, your own
machine, or almost anything service that lets you store files over ftp
or sftp.  You can host either open or private projects on Launchpad.

 * Launchpad and Bazaar work well together: Launchpad gives you branch
hosting, subscriptions, email notifications, code reviews, bug-branch
links, and read/write access control on branches.

 * Launchpad's source code is available under an open source/free
software licence.

Similarly for support, I'd like people to understand that they can get
support for free on the list or through Answers, commercially from
Canonical, or commercially from any other provider that cares to be
listed.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>