Request: please consider clarifying the project's position on Spins

Thu Dec 2 17:24:02 UTC 2010

On 12/02/2010 12:18 AM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> 2010/12/1 "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"<johannbg at gmail.com>:
>> On 12/01/2010 10:32 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
>> I say give all *DE all spins equal support from the community, give them
>> complete decision freedom on how they do things and how they ship them (
>> for example iso vs usb key image ) and let them decide their target
>> audience and the primary vision that the project has is to be that
>> platform of the choice with the best tools of the trades.
>>
>> Not all have been treated equal here but that can certainly can be
>> changed and what's stopping us from doing that?
>>
> I am not sure what you are meaning? What I am reading is the following:
>
> A) The community should be forced to work equally on all *DE's even if
> they don't want to.
Hows that different from the board trying to force one single vision and 
one set of target audience with one desktop environment upon the whole 
community?

Anyway let's look your A)

Up to a certain limit yes then from there on it's up to the *DE or spins 
and the sub community surround them to take it to the next level.

For instance QA would make sure the spin work on basic level ( you can 
install boot and establish a network connection ) , The design team 
makes sure it's themes etc. are coherent. The docs team that minimal 
documentation are in place and the marketing team that minimal marketing 
material surrounding it are in place in essence provide them with the 
same set of tools same set of presentation and download option as 
everybody else and the minimal work and community to get started and 
maintained in the infrastructure.

> B) Each sub-project should be able to do whatever they want and be
> able to call what they did as Fedora whether anyone else would want to
> call it that.

Hum not following you here but if I'm getting you right.. .

For a sub community like spins ( or any other for that matter ) to be 
able to grow and thrive you have to put faith in those that are in 
charge and the freedom for them to do what they think is the best for 
their target audience and those that want to participate in what ever 
decision making they do will have to join their sub community and 
participate through whatever community channel they decide to use and 
follow what ever hierarchy model they have in place for their sub 
community and the project in whole only to provide them with the tools 
and guides and minimal set of basic rules in general the means to do and 
of course equally present them all and give them all the same download 
options if it's a sub community surrounding a spin within the overall 
project .

In pathetic attempt I'll simplify and try to explain how I see things by 
giving you an example what my mind sees...

The Gnome Desktop team through what ever decision making they have in 
place has decide set the single family of novice end user as their 
target audience running on their desktop notebooks and laptops on a 
modern hardware and running only single OS on that hw.

They do some research pick the apps they are going to ship and fill in 
the gaps where needed and set the overall security policy aimed at no 
more than four person working at most on the same OS on the same hw 
sacrificing a bit of security vs usability.

Now when they are doing that they realize that for them to deliver the 
best end user experience to the end user they need not limit themselves 
with the size and restrains of a single CD if they do they have to cut 
out libreoffice, gimp solitare in essence and what not which will 
cripple the end user experience they are aiming at so they do some 
researching and find an economical friendlier reusable and cheap 
solution 1 Gb USB Flash drive with the simplest install method ever one 
big button that says INSTALL after all the novice end user has no 
comprehension on what partition etc. is et all  .

In another corner of overall Fedora project..

The server SIG is emerging stronger then ever with their set of target 
audience sysadmins and since sysadmin generally is a smart group of 
people they settle for the best scalable solution ever. Fedora server 
images oh please that's so yesterday leave that crap at home with other 
distro's nope no images that's right and they will only be using 
<services>.ks files stored in git. Very easy to maintain by the 
community. Leaves no bloat on mirrors and easy testable by QA. All you 
need to as a sysadmin is to setup cobbler server whether you are on your 
home network or on a enterprise network and perform a git checkout 
fedora-<service>.ks like for example fedora-lamp.ks  and you will 
install and setup a minimal secure performance tuned lamp server for 
your task. Crippled point and click admin no need to worry they have 
altered firstboot for that ( firstboot-fedora-lamp )  that will provide 
you with step guided next to next for your fedora lamp server to provide 
you with the help to get you up and running in no time..

Meanwhile Lightweight X11Desktop Environment groups is defining it's 
target audience so they decide to be able to fit on a single cd or 512Mb 
USB Flash drive and they decide to use alternitive installer since 
Anaconda requires more resource then the actual Lightweight X11Desktop 
Environment to run and since they are so lightweight they decide to try 
to become the desktop of choice for users on old and or refurbished 
redeployed hardware and they like to release new updated iso every month 
to prevent users from having to download equal to iso size or more just 
after they installed the operating system in the form of updates.

Three distinct SIG and notice three distinct set of target audience. .  .

Then the Gnome Desktop SIG could work in peace ( from the overall 
community or some all must follow this defined project vision ) to 
follow its defined set of target audience. The community can then just 
point those that dislike the Gnome Desktop to the Gnome Desktop SIG 
communication channel and point them out that they should have voiced in 
and participated in the discussion when the target audience was being 
defined and at the same time Gnome Desktop SIG can point to other spins 
SIG that might suite their need better such as to the server SIG if you 
are a unhappy sysadmin or to the LXDE if you need run something on older 
hardware thus an already exiting user would not be leaving but 
relocating within the whole project.

Now ask your self what happens if the overall project steps in and 
demands of the Gnome SIG that it should only use CD sized images or if 
the server SIG would be demanded to provide servers spins or if LXDE 
would be forced to run support and run only on modern hardware.  Do you 
realize how much of that would twist and altered everything for them?

Ok so I'm going to try to come up with a summary of what I just wrote 
which probably will be misunderstood and thus I will fail miserably not 
the first and certainly not the last time that will happen.

All the community is made up from individuals that come from all over 
the world and all are working in various places in the community with 
such a diverse set of packages thus imposing a single vision and single 
desktop environment is doomed to failure. It worked fine when there 
where only two *DE no spins and couple of thousand packages times have 
changed a lot since then.

How many do you think have tried any of the other DE after they tried 
the *Default* desktop and found out it did not work for them vs how many 
deemed the Fedora project in whole a failure based on their initial 
experience of the Gnome Desktop which they would not have done if they 
had been using Fedora Gnome Desktop?

Users would be more likely to try anything like another DE Fedora has to 
offer since there is a difference between Fedora sucks and Fedora Gnome 
sucks.

With a new releng emerging it is time to get with the times move Fedora 
Desktop to Fedora Gnome Desktop and drop Fedora "default" spin and the 
concept with it altogether and bury the hatched that has caused such a 
rift in the community with it.

If we continue on this path we have to come up with more set of rules 
and with what decides and how it's decided what is supposed to be the 
*Default* desktop offering which will just cause more friction in the 
community and yata yata yata..

JBG

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