Workstation PRD approval

[Paul W. Frields]

On Thu, Jan 09, 2014 at 11:51:25AM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Matthew Garrett <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 07, 2014 at 05:34:31AM -0500, Christian Schaller wrote:
> >> > On Mon, Jan 06, 2014 at 01:47:48PM +0100, Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller
> >> > wrote:
> >> > So who do we expect to provide those engineering resources? We seem to
> >> > agree that those general users are, in many cases, the developers and
> >> > enthusiasts that we expect to support, so we need to ensure that there's
> >> > development effort put into ensuring that the desktop experience itself
> >> > is compelling.
> >>
> >> I expect the vast majority of our engineering resources to come from Red Hat.
> >
> > Red Hat will be committing engineering resources to support the general
> > user desktop?
> >
> >> > The list of use cases is supposed to define the sets of users that we'll
> >> > consider during development. We agree that the needs of the general
> >> > desktop user are important and have to be considered during development,
> >> > which means that it's a supported use case. Which obviously means it
> >> > should be enumerated in the set of use cases.
> >>
> >> I disagree, it is meant to enumerate the areas we give special focus during development. Adding a 'catch all' usecase
> >> like 'general users' doesn't help anyone do anything.
> >
> > I don't think you understand what "use case" means. It's the set of ways
> > that people can use our system that we wish to support. We wish to
> > support users who aren't actively engaging in development and who aren't
> > CS students, so they should be included in the set of use cases that we
> > support.
> 
> We've reached a stalemate on this.
> 
> On the one hand we have a case that aims Workstation at becoming a
> development environment for a broad set of possible software.  On the
> other we have one that places importance on general desktop usage.
> Neither of them are actually conflicting with each other in any way
> other than whether the latter is implicit in the former.
> 
> It seems we have a trust issue here.  There's a lack of trust that a
> development focused Workstation can possibly be generally usable while
> also solving problems for the developer set.  There's a lack of trust
> that resources will be put forward where necessary.  And there's a
> complete lack of faith that other contributors and upstreams can fill
> the role of developing applications and such for the general use case.
> 
> I can't solve this, but the (agonizingly delayed) back and forth going
> on right now is not lending itself to actually accomplishing anything
> at all.  If we don't set a direction soon, and have faith that people
> won't have their heads up their collective arses and hold myopic views
> of "targets", then we're going to continue to languish.
> 
> We have a deadline for the PRD coming up in about a week.  I'd like to
> actually have something to present to FESCo.  Can we please either
> agree to trust each other or barring that call for a vote on one of
> the current draft PRDs?  Members of the Workstation WG really need to
> speak up here.

I hope it's not my mail client acting up, but it looks like no replies
here from WG members.  I'd like to explicitly say I for one trust that
those expecting (and expected) to do a majority of the work do care
about the general use case.  And I'd expect many, and perhaps most, of
the things that improve by focusing on a good experience for
developers will also benefit general users.

Personally I'm a lot more like the latter than the former, which is
why I want to trust the contributors to do the right thing.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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