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I have encountered a vergence in the Ubuntu derivative landscape, Zentyal!

So basically, my question is this: Because the zentyal packages are in the Ubuntu Archives, and because they have a partnership with Canonical about this stuff, do we count them as off-topic or on-topic?

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    I'm waiting for a Zentyal representative to make a case as an answer (and by representative I mean employee who is going to actively try and answer those questions). Just saying that if it's going to be on topic, they should have some skin in the game.
    – RobotHumans
    Commented Oct 8, 2012 at 20:02
  • I'd have counted it as off-topic, but since the packages are in the Ubuntu archive, lsb_release -a says Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS, and I only see one PPA and a archive.zentyal.org for translations in apt-get update. EDIT: They ship their own iptables.
    – jrg Mod
    Commented Oct 8, 2012 at 20:11
  • Bump: so where does this fall? askubuntu.com/questions/286158/…
    – RobotHumans
    Commented Apr 26, 2013 at 20:29
  • @CallmeV on-topic, since he installed ubuntu then the zentyal packages.
    – jrg Mod
    Commented Apr 26, 2013 at 21:11
  • strange they used to have ubuntu logos on their website, It seems they used to have a much closer tie to ubuntu and now they don't.
    – Mateo
    Commented Sep 29, 2014 at 19:37

2 Answers 2

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off-topic

AskUbuntu is not a proxy for Canonical business propositions and partners.

As of last week, we are supporting our Spanish partner, Zentyal, in their provision of software and services to small and medium-sized businesses.

Zentyal distribute an operating system of the same name – and it’s based on Ubuntu. It’s designed to offer small and medium-sized businesses easy, low-maintenance access to all the essential business IT capabilities

As the first few lines of the Zentyal announcement make clear - this is a business venture and the most knowledge of what Zentyal is about themselves & services they provide will reside with the company concerned.

IMHO - AskUbuntu is not a free and alternative support site for Canonical businesses & partners - these requests should be directed back to Canonical and/or their partners.

on-topic

With regards to the zentyal packages in the main repos/universe repos - I have no issues with questions about the package or software since they are open to inspection and comment. We should treat these packages as per the FAQ:

We welcome questions about ... Running third-party applications on Ubuntu ... and these should be practical, answerable questions based on actual problems.

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    I support what fossfreedom has said. Zentyal is not considered as an official derivative of Ubuntu by Canonical and we should stick to it. However, we should consider questions that have to do with their packages and installed in Ubuntu as ontopic.
    – jokerdino Mod
    Commented Oct 9, 2012 at 9:38
  • It isn't as cut and dry though - the packages are in the archives. So do we count those as off topic, like jokerdino said?
    – jrg Mod
    Commented Oct 9, 2012 at 12:39
  • @jrg Would we support a completely unofficial derivative that uses the official Ubuntu software sources? (Personally I'm fine with a yes answer to that ...but if the answer is no, I see no reason to support Zentyal either.)
    – Eliah Kagan
    Commented Oct 10, 2012 at 14:12
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I agree with what fossfreedom said above.

Note that while the packages are on Ubuntu repositories, Zentyal encourages the usage from their repositories, but it's a strictly Ubuntu-based tool. I think that AskUbuntu could is a reasonably fit for many Zentyal packages questions.

But then, in addition, Zentyal Community also has a support forum (http://forum.zentyal.org).

I personally like StackExchange interface a lot, but Zentyal forums have a wider scope. I guess that people will just normally use the tool of their choice in order to ask questions. I don't know if this situation is desirable, or if anyone has suggestions about how to deal with these cases.

(Disclaimer: I'm a former user, and now part of Zentyal, also a user and fan of AskUbuntu and StackExchange sites).

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    But questions about ubuntu packages in linux mint and other distros are offtopic here
    – Tachyons
    Commented Oct 15, 2012 at 21:33

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