Fedora Board Strategic Working Group

[Mike McGrath]

On Tue, 12 Jan 2010, Luke Macken wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 03:03:13PM -0500, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 11:29:06AM -0600, Mike McGrath wrote:
> > > On Tue, 12 Jan 2010, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 12:39:49AM -0500, Jon Stanley wrote:
> > > > > On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 12:24 AM, Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > > There are potential issues.  For instance, when the Desktop spin wanted to
> > > > > > move to PolicyKit-1.0 and said that they'd veto a PoicyKit-compat package to
> > > > > > allow KDE applications to work.  Or when zope was dropped from the
> > > > > > repositories because it wasn't ported to python2.5 and we didn't want to
> > > > > > have a python-2.4 compat package.  There have also been times when certain
> > > > > > compilation options on one package were needed to allow other packages to
> > > > > > function but, because of the dependencies that the compilation options
> > > > > > brought in, that package didn't want to do so.
> > > > >
> > > > > Good points - but where and how do we draw the line between something
> > > > > that's acceptable to be called Fedora and something that is not?
> > > > >
> > > > I like the line of "in the Fedora repositories" but I'm warning that
> > > > sometimes we keep things (that are free software and legal to ship in the
> > > > US) outside of the Fedora repositories and that limits what a spin can do.
> > > > When we discuss a target audience we have to be careful that we continue to
> > > > make it possible for other audiences to be addressed by having ways to
> > > > mediate these differences.  Deciding that the default spin is more important
> > > > than any other spin and that the default target audience is more important
> > > > than any other audience is dangerous as we start making decisions based on
> > > > the importance to the target audience instead of on how the decision enables
> > > > more contributors to do the work that's important to them.
> > > >
> > > > I see things a bit differently from poelcat in that I think that having the
> > > > Board define a target audience for Fedora is not beneficial.  In fact, it is
> > > > detrimental to Fedora.
> > >
> > > Pretend you're on the desktop team.  You've got lots of people working
> > > with you and are going to spend the next 3 years on something.  Is it
> > > going to be features or usability?  Sure it's a mix of both, but when an
> > > issue comes up that that will either sacrifice usability for a feature,
> > > or will sacrifice a feature for usability what do you do?  You can't
> > > answer that question without a target audience or what is Fedora (the OS).
> > >
> > > At the moment though we seem to be sacrificing usability for features,
> > > that may be right or it may be wrong for Fedora.  I have no idea and
> > > neither can anyone else without some focus.
> > >
> > I absolutely agree that there should be a target audience for a SIG to
> > effectively decide what to work on.  However, that definition should be
> > decided on by the individual SIGs, not by the Board.  The Board's job should
> > be to balance the needs of the various SIGs since they share the package
> > collection and therefore need to figure out how to work together in that
> > space.
> >
> > The Board should be an enabler, a servant leader, for those who are doing
> > the work and driving their pieces of the overall Fedora Project forward.
> > Defining a target audience for the whole Fedora Project limits the people
> > who feel they can provide vision to the Project.
>
> Well stated, Toshio.  I completely agree.
>
> > >   *Individual spins* (including the default spin)
> > > > would definitely benefit from targeting specific audiences but the Board and
> > > > FESCo's responsibility is to help all the sub-communities that make up
> > > > Fedora be able to derive usable products from the Fedora Package Collection.
> > > > This means mediating disputes, drumming up support for switching base parts
> > > > of our architecture (like moving from SysVinit to upstart), and defining the
> > > > absolute limitations that the Fedora Project will follow (free software,
> > > > legality within the US).
> > > >
> > >
> > > The funny thing here is I think spins are a detriment to Fedora.  We
> > > pretend they're useful and interesting but they're really not.  If we
> > > describe them as "a subset of what is in the Everything/ directory" which
> > > is what they are, they're not at all compelling.
> > >
> > Spins aren't best described as a subset of the packages in the Everything
> > repo.  A better description is that they are a particular group of
> > contributors' vision of what an operating system should look like.  This
> > seems like a compelling way of filling that niche.
>
> Right, spins are much more than just a subset of packages.  Sure, you
> have the base desktop spins like xfce, lxde, gnome, moblin, sugar, kde,
> but you also have higher level spins built on top of those.  These
> spins, such the electronics lab, security lab, or the design suite, are
> custom molded operating systems designed to lower the bar for
> accomplishing a common subset of tasks, by not only providing custom
> menus and defaults, but ideally by fostering a community of contributers
> and users that are passionate about using Fedora to solve many different
> types of problems.
>

I'd bet no one reading this email right now is doing so on a spin.
Because once you install it, it's not a spin anymore.  It's just Fedora.

For those that aren't clear what I'm talking about.  This is a spin:

http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=spin-kickstarts.git;a=blob_plain;f=fedora-livecd-lxde.ks;hb=HEAD

I'm very happy to see lxde is in Fedora, and I'm equally happy to see the
Fedora Electronics Lab works.  But in spin form, it's just been a
distraction from those SIGs all of who have limited resources.  Granted,
users have to get from $NULL to "installed FEL" or LXDE somehow but spins
aren't the answer.  At least not with a drastic change in the way we do
things.

> I don't see spins as being a detriment to Fedora, actually quite the
> opposite.  I see them as helping us cultivate a variety of
> sub-communities that help to make it easy to do incredible things with
> Fedora.  With these these sub-communities each with their own clearly
> defined goals, the question of our unified "Target Audience" disappears,
> as we now have many.
>

Spins don't create sigs.  Spins create extra work for the sigs to do that,
at best, are a marketing tool.

	-Mike