Formal request for approval of the multi-desktop DVD (Re: Board meeting recap, 2010 10-18)

[Matt Domsch]

A number of concerns have been raised, I'd like to see these closed
out.

* It's coming in way late.  This I agree with, and it may be enough to
  be a showstopper for this release.  But it doesn't have to be, if
  rel-eng isn't expected to produce it, and if QA isn't expected to
  test it.  Aside from being possible now, here is nothing put forward
  that would prevent this from being held until the F15 release, like
  we do with other "features" - and I do think changing the
  delivery model can be considered a feature change.

* Forget about calling this a remix.  If we want our ambassadors to
  hand this out at events, EMEA or elsewhere, it needs to be produced
  by and for the Project as a whole.  The EMEA ambassadors may be the
  actors getting the ISOs pressed, and they may be the ones doing to
  ISO creation and testing, but the end result must be a
  Project-produced item, not treated like a 3rd-party produced item.

* GNOME vs Desktop naming, seems resolved or easily resolvable.  Mo is
  right though that we would want to see a good user experience, and
  that being late lends itself to a more hasty, and possibly
  sub-optimal experience.  Given that the design team has had a hand
  in producing the other sleeves and labels, it's fair to include them
  in the production of such for this too (I could digress into
  unfunded mandates here, when it's late in the cycle and everyone is
  stressed...)

* Source distribution.  This is an aggregation of the existing spin
  images, so there are no _new_ obligations.  Source is in the
  Everything/ tree, and in git.  We don't currently publish an ISO of
  SRPMS corresponding to the contents of the other spins.  I do still
  encourage people to add their srpm lists to the correspondingsource
  git tree on fedorahosted though.

* I'd argue that having QA test it is important. I agree the test plan
  need not be huge and complex, and need not duplicate all the other
  testing of the individual spins, but some formal test plan, covering
  the difference between the existing spins and this, is critical.
  And someone needs to both write the test plan, and find the manpower
  to carry out those tests.  (I could digress into unfunded mandates
  here, when it's late in the cycle and everyone is stressed...)

* I don't see a need for Infrastructure to host the ISO for
  downloadability, but I think we could.  It's 5.2GB, which could pose
  a problem in our serving environment (files > 4GB tend to cause
  problems for apache), but alt.fp.o is currently running x86_64
  apache, which should not have a problem with large files.

* How will liveusb-creator handle being given this image?  Will it
  still work?  It doesn't have to, but it'd be nice to know if it'll
  break...


So, my gut feeling is, this is possible, but way late, and is
introducing stress into the system exactly when it shouldn't be.
Could we pull it off?  Likely yes.  Will it be bumpy?  Likely yes (as
this conversation has already shown).

Christoph, how can you and others help alleviate these stresses, so to
produce this now, rather than waiting for F15?

Thanks,
Matt