Updates next steps

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2010-04-21 at 20:33 -0400, William Jon McCann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 5:29 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2010-04-21 at 23:15 +0200, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> >> Am Mittwoch, den 21.04.2010, 12:02 -0400 schrieb William Jon McCann:
> >> > Hey folks,
> >> >
> >> > We discussed this a bit on IRC yesterday but I wanted to bring it up
> >> > on the list too.
> >> >
> >> > Now that we have rough consensus that we should try to limit the
> >> > volume of "pointless" updates, what is next?
> >>
> >> I wonder who is "we" and why this is discussed on the desktop list and
> >> not in f-d-l.
> >
> > Indeed. I believe FESCo has approved a policy on enhanced *testing* of
> > candidate updates, but that's all. I don't believe there is a consensus
> > on restricting updates by type, or grouping them.
> 
> So, that's cool.  I take it back - let's not limit pointless updates -
> it is certainly a silly idea.  ;)
> 
> Jokes aside, this is what Jesse and ajax told me on IRC that we (the
> project) had decided.  So I was just repeating it here.

I don't think that's actually correct. I haven't followed the latest
FESCo meetings closely, but if I recall it correctly, back when FESCo
first asked Bill Nottingham to take his proposal on enhanced updates
testing further, at the same meeting FESCo explicitly chose *not* to
move in the direction of trying to restrict updates by type or group
them. If I'm remembering wrong or FESCo has changed tack on this
recently, sorry.

> Most of the time when I say "we" on this list I mean the people who
> are interested in designing and defining the user experience of this
> desktop thing.

However, this plan would not affect only 'this desktop thing'. It would
affect the entire distribution. The desktop mailing list really is not
the appropriate venue for this discussion. If you're only posting it to
desktop list to try and hide it from people who would disagree with the
plan, that's a really bad idea.

There is nothing in this proposal that is specific to 'the desktop' or
to GNOME, hence it does not belong on this list.

'Just going ahead and doing stuff' is often a good thing, I agree, but
not _always_, and not on a topic where the issue isn't just people
bikeshedding about the best way to do things, but a pretty fundamental
disagreement about whether it's actually desirable to do the thing _at
all_. It seems to me that it's wrong for someone to just go ahead and do
it anyway in this kind of case.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net