Fedora.NEXT Products and the fate of Spins

[Chris Murphy]

On Feb 2, 2014, at 2:54 PM, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:

> On 02/02/2014 07:26 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
>> 
>> On Feb 2, 2014, at 6:33 AM, Solomon Peachy <pizza at shaftnet.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Sat, Feb 01, 2014 at 11:06:18PM +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
>>>> I don't understand why we are doing that "Fedora.NEXT" thing in the
>>>> first place. It's a lot of change for the sake of change, without any
>>>> idea whether the output will be better than the status quo, or even
>>>> whether there will be any (usable) output at all!
>>> 
>>> For what my opinion is worth (as someone who's been around since the
>>> RHL4.1 days) I have to agree.
>> 
>> 
>> I think this is a good summary of what it's all about and what it isn't.
> Would you mind do summarize how you understand this in your own words?

> To me this all reads as "Fedora.Next" is a marketing term for a predefined set of packages aiming at certain arbitrary predefined use-cases.

First, subjective and arbitrary are not the same thing, and considering Fedora.next being purely random and whimsical is hyperbole.

Therefore my understanding is different. What's been called "hand waviness" is the unavoidable subjective state of any new process. The flushing out and refinement of subjective goals into objective ones is what the Working Groups are doing. I also understand that while a high percentage of objectivity is desired and intended, even by Fedora 21 the process will still be maturing.

I can only imagine focus, instead of haphazard and the potential for truly arbitrary outcomes, occurs without any consideration of use cases. So I see pre-defined use cases as completely reasonable. Are they subjective? Sure. But we're not building a linux distribution for camels, so lets not pretend that we have unlimited resources, that Fedora is a chameleon and it can be all things to everyone simultaneously and still be high enough quality and relevance that people want to, you know, use it and get things done.


Chris Murphy