Alpha Criterion Discussion: Desktop Backgrounds

[Paul W. Frields]

On Fri, Aug 07, 2015 at 09:06:26AM -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Aug 2015 08:30:44 -0400
> Stephen Gallagher <sgallagh at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > As promised at yesterday's Go/No-Go meeting, I'm starting a discussion
> > on the Alpha criterion that states: "The default desktop background
> > must be different from that of the two previous stable releases."
> > 
> > As I understand it, the intent is essentially that no one booting a
> > Fedora pre-release should infer that it is a stable release and that
> > this should be obvious from the desktop background.
> 
> I don't even think the desktop background is all that visible anymore,
> especially on some desktops (like workstation/gnome). People there tend
> to use full screen apps and never even see the wallpaper.
> 
> That also seems like a pretty poor way to tell what release you are
> running.
> > 
> > I suppose this makes some sense for Live media (particularly when
> > burned to a USB stick that may not have a label). That being said, I
> > do not agree that this should be a *blocking* issue for release.
> 
> I agree. I think we should remove this critera from the alpha critera. 
> 
> ...snip...
> 
> > I'd like to propose that we remove this as a strict blocking criterion
> > and instead introduce a new category of criteria for automatic freeze
> > -exceptions of which this could be a part. Essentially, up to the
> > moment that an RC is declared gold, any changes made to support an
> > automatic freeze-exception must be pulled in.
> > 
> > The idea would be that these auto-FEs should still be part of the
> > validation runs, but not blocking for the release. Does this seem like
> > a reasonable middle-ground?
> 
> I don't think we should do this, it sounds overcomplex. How about we
> just let new backgrounds propose as FE's and get pulled in if we feel
> they should be. 

That sounds reasonable.

I think it would make sense for the Design team to be aware of this
proposal too.  I think the criterion has been used as a forcing
function in the past, so if it's not going to trigger a notification
they expect, we don't want designers to be surprised by this change in
the future.

Obviously this change would beg the discussion of how they manage
background art schedule in the future, but at least we want to afford
them the opportunity.


-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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