Response to "Getting Fedora Out of the If-Then Loop"

Christoph Wickert christoph.wickert at googlemail.com
Fri Feb 19 22:18:42 UTC 2010


Am Freitag, den 19.02.2010, 16:40 -0500 schrieb Josh Boyer:
> On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 10:12:12PM +0100, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> >Am Freitag, den 19.02.2010, 10:51 -0500 schrieb Josh Boyer:

> >> Why would they leave?
> >
> >Because they get little or no support as outlined recently in
> >http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-February/013639.html
> 
> I'll address some of your points.  Lots of them are resource issues overall.
> Leaving because Fedora doesn't have the resources to accomodate a new Spin/
> effort at the same level as existing ones might very well happen, this is
> true.  However, there isn't much we can do about that other than to state
> clearly why we can't do something and ask those wanting it done to pitch in
> and help.

Me and a lot of ambitious people are already working hard on the spins.
I don't see what more we can do. If you take a look at my examples, you
will see there is nothing where we could just pith in and do it. Instead
these are ether resource issues and we are not to decide on them or
other things outside our scope.

>  * The spins get little support by rel-eng: I had to withdraw the
>    LXDE spin due to a critical error one day after it was released.
>    I fixed the problem within 2 days, nevertheless it took 4 weeks
>    until the new images were created.  rel-eng also denied to test
>    the spins (although this workflow is written down in the wiki),
>    but never asked the spins SIG to test them ether. 
> 
> Rel-Eng consists of about 4 people that are actively working various areas
> of rel-eng for Fedora.  The one person that creates the spins also happens
> to be responsible for creating the other 9 spins as well as the two primary
> spins, the DVD, the CD images, staging it to the mirrors, etc.  One person
> only goes so far.
> 
> Testing wouldn't be done by rel-eng, but QA.  QA is similarly understaffed.

The spins SIG offered to take over testing of the spins, but so far
there has been no agreement between spins SIG and rel-eng.

> Further, you are the primary creator of the Spin.  Why _wouldn't_ you test
> it?  

Because me as the primary creator was not even aware of the images.
Nobody in rel-eng bothered to contact the spin owners after they created
the images, so the owners were not able to test them.

> It seems very odd to me that you'd create something for release that
> you didn't test at all (which I don't believe was really the case here.)
> Why an explicit testing request for the Spin you own is needed is beyond me.

Just for the record: My images worked. I gave around 40 CDs away on an
event one week before the release and received no complainants. 

>  * Little support by infrastructure: We still have no direct
>    downloads of the spins, only torrents.  The leader of Fedora
>    infrastructure even claimed that the "spins are a detriment to
>    Fedora". 
> 
> We try very hard to keep the mirror content under 1TB.  We actually have
> gotten rather close a number of times.  Hosting more content for spins
> would push us past that.

I doubt that 2,4 GB which (total sum of Xfce and LXDE for i686 and
x86_64) make a large difference. And I doubt we couldn't save these 2,4
GB somewhere if really necessary.

> The comment is a personal view not necessarily shared by the entire
> Infrastructure team.  We really need to stop taking the words of a few
> and attributing them to the Fedora _project_.
> 
>  * OpenSUSE had nice 24" touch screen computers at FOSDEM while
>    Fedora usually has the laptops of the ambassadors or laptops
>    that were sponsored by Dell for one particular event only. 
>  * Every OpenSUSE ambassador gets an ambassadors starter kit with a
>    bag, a jacket, a shirt, a printed handbook, media and some more
>    goodies.  Fedora ambassadors on the other hand have to pay for
>    their polos them selves (at least in EMEA). 
> 
> Those are simply about money and have nothing to do with Spins.  

Right, this was already on another topic, the commitment from Red Hat in
general. Let's skip this, it doesn't belong here. I have named 6 groups
in Fedora or 6 issues where there is to little support for the spins.
You only commented on 2 of the issues.

> All of the above seem very much problems with resource contraints.  If
> we had infinite resources, we could provide equal support for whatever
> Spin was created.  We don't have infinite resources.  I will go so far
> as to say that the resources we have are insufficient for our current
> demand as it is.  Rel-Eng, QA, Infrastructure, Design team, all of them
> need more people.

Right, we don't have infinite resources, so we need to arrange them
better and more suitable.

> josh

Regards,
Christoph



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