Draft Product Description for Fedora Workstation

[Josh Boyer]

On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 1:34 PM, Miloslav Trmač <mitr at volny.cz> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 7:24 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>> I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around the intense focus on a
>> new app packaging technology when the entire distro is making massive
>> changes to how it's produced.
>
> I think the trouble here is that the Linux Apps proposal (which is
> being implicitly referred to) uses a single term to mix three
> completely different problems, each of them difficult, and gives us a
> single "package deal":
>
> * Sandboxing as a protection mechanism (technically difficult - to
> design, to migrate to, lots of work to implement)
> * Bundling as a way to "solve" API/ABI breakage (not "technically
> right" yet done and requested in practice, security concerns)
> * Non-distribution mechanisms to get software from developers to users
> (losing control/ability to integrate, making it easier for proprietary
> software)
>
> With the 2^3 possible combinations of likes/dislikes, almost everyone
> has something to be intensely unhappy about.

Sure, but that's kind of my point.  If we can't realize that it's
possible to do some kind of combination that makes sense with
something this small, what are we going to do when the entire distro
is up for change?  While I dislike buzzwords, the stop energy here is
pretty daunting.

> On the other hand, the move to WGs has so far not resulted in any
> drastic proposals to change what we are doing; it's easy to view this
> as "different kinds of spins with more voting bodies".  I expect this
> to change eventually, but not just now.

What you say makes some sense.  It also makes me very tired thinking
about the threads coming when the details start getting presented by
the WGs :).  I guess that's what we've signed up for though.

josh