RFC: Proposal for a more agile "Fedora.next" (draft of my Flock talk)

[Brendan Jones]

On 07/23/2013 08:38 PM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> I've found it very hard to find the right place to jump into this
> discussion.
>
> So, I'll just put out some of my own thoughts about what I want to see
> out of Fedora, and then point out how I think this matches or contrasts
> with Matts proposal.
>
> Fedora should be an *OS*. Here are some of the qualities that I
> associated with that term:
>
> - It has a clearly defined boundary, with stable APIs. Some things are
> not going to be part of the OS, even though they are part of the Fedora
> universe: for example, applications. Stable is important; if you can't
> upgrade from version x to version x+1 and keep installed applications
> working, it is not an OS, imo. And it will never be attractive to
> anybody outside the Fedora packager community to do something with
> Fedora or build something on it, if there is no assurance that it
> continue working beyond the 6 month (or 13 month) horizon of the Fedora
> schedule.
>
> - The purpose of the OS is to run applications. So, it needs to be
> provide a way to install, update and run applications. We obviously
> support this now, in a way. But we need to get a lot better (see the
> AppInstaller proposal). The big is that many apps are simply not
> available on Fedora, because packaging is not something that is
> interesting for many people, and mostly a wasted effort from the
> perspective of the app developer (see the previous point).
>
> - There need to be defined extension points for how you add new stuff to
> it that does not fit int the 'application' category. Things like codecs,
> translations, fonts, runtime environments.
>
> - It should provide a defined (or designed) user experience. It can of
> course provide more than one, depending on the context it is used in:
> client, server, cloud, etc. Also worth mentioning here is the runtime vs
> devel split. Ideally, there will also be a defined experience for
> developers, an SDK if you will.
>
> Thats enough blue sky vision for now. How does this match up with Matt's
> proposal ?
>
> The 'Base OS / ring 0 + 1' in the proposal could possibly match my idea
> of an OS as having clearly defined boundaries (core + standard is pretty
> clear as to whats in and whats out), but as far as API is concerned, it
> seems a little weak - I would expect most of the system services that we
> are relying on to be part of the core that needs to have a stable API:
> policykit, pam, logind, udisks, sssd, realmd, etc. Many of these
> probably get pulled in via dependencies. It would be better to list them
> explicitly, imo. There is a tension between defining a complete enough
> API, and going for a minimal platform that can accomodate the needs of
> e.g. cloud images.

The question we should be asking is how Fedora being used in the wild? I 
am also hesitant to lax standards and to even consider bundled libs. If 
someone has a use case for it they will do it anyway. Packaging software 
in /opt is an alternative.
Being a developer it happens to me time and time again and is always 
dependant on the client. What I love about Fedora is that it forces me 
to consider latest developments whereas a client may not.