Workstation PRD approval

[Josh Boyer]

On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 1:23 PM, drago01 <drago01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 4:01 PM, Christian Schaller <cschalle at redhat.com> wrote:
>> Ok, we are going in circles here. So lets be clear we all agree that we need a system where the basics are working well. Ease of installation, robustness, driver support and so on. The system can not be inherently broken. We all agree on that point.
>>
>> So the next question becomes, what is the point of the PRD? First of all it is not to define what applications people can or can not package for the Fedora ecosystem. If someone wants to package 'My little Pony click-along adventures' that is perfectly fine no matter what usecases or targets we list in the PRD.
>>
>> The point of the PRD is to give an overall set of priorities/goals for the development effort around each product. Meaning where are we going to spend engineering time beyond the basic 'make the system work smoothly'. So if you are going to make general consumers a specific target we need to back that up with development plans for general consumer, like writing new applications for smoother facebook usage or more educational software for kids or whatever you decide the 'general consumer' wants. So while there might be software in such categories which ends up getting packaged for Fedora, I don't think there is anyone on this list who actually plans on writing such software for Fedora specifically.
>>
>> So as I stated before and which also the PRD stated, we do hope that the workstation becomes a solid and nice desktop that a lot of people can like and want to use, because at the end of the day all users, developer or others, want the same baseline, a stable and well working system.
>
> It seems like you and Matthew don't really disagree much on what we
> should produce just whether we should add the general user to the PRD.
> Given that we are going to cover this case anyway (because in the end
> everyone is a "general user") ... how does adding it hurts us? It just
> a clear statement that non developers are not excluded.

The problem, as I see it, is that "general user" is much too flexible
of a usecase.  It leaves open things like "user X wants to use a
mismash of applications from different DEs" and "user Y is a general
user but wants to use a different DE".  It focuses too much on
personal preference, which leads to a somewhat nebulous target and is
difficult to meet.  Sure, we can say that isn't something Workstation
is aimed at, but it's hard to stand your ground when the user is
listed as "general".

However, "general desktop _usage_" is certainly within scope.
Developers, sysadmins, students, grandma, all use a desktop.  They
read email.  They use a web browser.  The basics of using your
computer are implicit as Christian says, but Matthew contends leaving
them out reads as if there will be no focus given to them.

I would argue the target users are additive to general desktop usage.
So instead, perhaps the PRD could incorporate somewhere that we wish
to produce a Workstation that is high quality and usable for daily
computing but with focus improvements in the developer areas.  This
could perhaps be done very simply as a line addition or slight
rewording in the mission statement.

josh