Stable release updates vision

[Paul Frields]

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 9:32 AM, Greg DeKoenigsberg <gdk at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Mar 2010, Paul W. Frields wrote:
>
>> As noted in our previous minutes[1], the Board was tasked with
>> producing a vision statement for updates to Fedora stable releases.
>> That vision can be found here:
>>
>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Stable_release_updates_vision
>>
>> This statement is the result of many Board discussions which have
>> taken into consideration issues raised recently in numerous other
>> venues such as the devel list.  After considering these issues
>> carefully, along with other factors such as the broad user base for
>> which we should strive[2], the Board feels this vision will best meet
>> the needs of our millions of users, including our contributor base.
>>
>> The Board would like FESCo to read through this vision statement, and
>> use it as a basis for implementing changes that will help achieve this
>> vision.  We look forward to working with FESCo and across the whole
>> Fedora Project to continue improving the Fedora distribution.
>
> I believe that we should build the infrastructure to support these policy
> changes first.

I think I can speak for the Board when I say that we support tools and
policy changes, and that in some cases we can't have one without the
other.

> As Spot eloquently pointed out, the number of users who are likely to help
> promote packages from testing to stable is currently a vanishingly small
> number.

Don't overgeneralize his statement, though -- we were talking about a
specific kind of package there, which is a long tail of what I call
"edge" packages. (I maintain several myself.) Till Maas' recent
fedora-easy-karma script has increased my participation in the current
updates-testing process by severalfold for instance, so we can make
some incremental steps here.

> We must first solve this problem.  When we are satisfied that we've got
> tools that significantly increase participation in updates-testing, then
> *and only then* should we change the policies around updates-testing.
>
> Which, to me, means "build improved updates-testing flow for F14, change
> policy starting with F15".

As with lots of things in Fedora, we can make incremental progress
here in the right direction.

Paul