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

[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:
>> On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 04:40:55PM +0100, Thomas Janssen wrote:
>> >
>> >But i would be interested in what you think what will happen with
>> >Fedora if all the unwanted (it sounds exactly like that to me)
>> >developers leave and Fedora is left behind with only GNOME?
>> >Is that your perfect future?
>> 
>> 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.

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

 * 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.

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.  There's
only so much money to go around.  I certainly agree it would be nice to
have things like that though.

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.

josh