Fedora Plasma Product, feedback please

Fri Mar 28 09:34:26 UTC 2014

----- Original Message -----
> As I mentioned in many other emails to the various Fedora lists I am very
> negative
> to growing the numbers of products, especially in light of the Fedora Product
> plan
> being an attempt to move away from Fedora just being a collection of
> components
> to actually being something identifiable and recognizable.
> 
> There should not be any new products of any kind launched or set up before
> we have the 3 current products launched and established, and the Fedora
> infrastructure
> fully updated to handle it.

I don't have a problem to wait with other products post F21, the idea is to
have flexible infrastructure that would allow us more products to fulfil
Fedora values - openness, friends. Not closed down exclusive community for
selected contributors. Is it more difficult? Does it lead to some overhead?
Yes, it is/does. It's a great message to wider community - hey, do you have
nice ideas? Come to Fedora, you're welcomed!

> Once we decide the time has come to open up for new products they should have
> a
> clear focus that is very different from what we have today. Matthias
> mentioned
> items such as a media center system as a good example of that in his email
> the
> other day.
> 
> The Plasma Product falls short of such a distinction. The attempt at carving
> out
> a set of usecases for the Plasma product doesn't really provide any real
> differentiation
> from the Workstation proposal. The PRDs are meant to be dynamic documents
> being updated
> over time and what happens when the workstation decides to broaden its focus
> as we move
> forward? Would Plasma then automatically retreat from claiming to be an
> offering for
> that field? Also of the kind of applications that is mentioned for Plasma,
> would any of
> them not work or not be possible to install into the Workstation? What real
> benefit would
> Plasma provide for running those applications that the Workstation can't?
> 
> KDE will be available for install onto the Workstation as stated multiple
> times, it working
> will even be release blocking. So for users who want a KDE desktop that
> option will be available
> through the workstation plans.

Well, with Rex we discussed it yesterday and we're working on proposal
for Workstation WG to create a real Workstation product - aiming more on
applications to make user experience better, than just technology behind.
Workstation product should be really technology agnostic product, I completely
agree with you, featuring best GNOME and KDE (and other apps if needed - for
example Firefox). I know you're proposing to work on better interoperability,
this way we could be catalyst for upstreams to work closely together. As for
last few years, we can see scrissors more opening between desktops available
upstream (GNOME, KDE, Unity, Cinnamon etc.). It's a great position where
Fedora can stay between all other distribution and differentiate.

As the parts of both platforms will be integral part of Workstation product
(and actually will be one platform), then it's not a problem to install by
default GNOME Shell/Plasma Desktop shell and make the selection in DM. The
overhead will be minimal. GNOME Shell being default selection. This way
we can offer a ground for more people to accommodate theirs need - being
productive using shell they prefer. It's not about shell - it's just app
launcher. In these days, it could be even considered as browser launcher
as Chrome OS shown us.

For "purists" - old KDE and Desktop spins would continue to exist. We are
now working on real product, not an use case of upstream technologies...
These are just reference for us.

> As a sidenote, in the FESCO notes there was a suggestion to the board to make
> a KDE spin blocking once we
> switch to the Products releases. I strongly object to this idea. It
> undermines the whole idea
> of having the product focus in the first place and creates a precedent for
> spins being more than
> unofficial community efforts to highlight various technologies and ideas.
> There is a proper plan and effort
> underway now in Fedora with the 3 products effort, lets stay the course and
> not water things down to a
> level where we are basically back to the bad old days.

If we would be able to implement the idea above, there's no need that 
former Desktop and KDE spins would have to be blocking at all. I agree.

I don't see much done for it but I expect the both GNOME and KDE team
can start really work together to form real one WG (and definitely not
limited to GNOME/KDE technology - we have a lot of stuff that should
be part of Workstation coming out of these two).

>From what I talked to you, I think we're mostly on the same boat. Rex
likes this cooperation too. There are a few tasks to be unblocked - so
far no decision on inclusion of kde-runtime into WS platform. Theming 
and other interoperability issues has to be resolved - there's Oxygen
GTK but not Adwaita Qt theme. Maybe we can work with Design team to
provide our own theme to differentiate from upstreams. And yes, I expect
picking up apps to be included by default in the product will be a bit
harder - as very often it's subjective which one is better. But we
have pretty straight use cases and it should help us to do it based
on objective criteria.

We should not compete, guys are right, but provide the best product
for our users, forget fan boys fights :). I even don't have any 
football team I prefer, I care about the game!

Jaroslav

> Christian
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Rex Dieter" <rdieter at math.unl.edu>
> > To: Advisory-board at lists.fedoraproject.org
> > Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 6:10:45 PM
> > Subject: Fedora Plasma Product, feedback please
> > 
> > The KDE SIG would like public comment and feedback on a new Fedora.next
> > product proposal:
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Plasma_Product
> > 
> > mostly on the base proposal, Governance and PRD bits.  Other stuff like
> > Technical spec are still undergoing polish.
> > 
> > Thanks.
> > 
> > -- Rex
> > 
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