Fedora.next in 2014 -- Big Picture and Themes

Thu Jan 23 18:03:02 UTC 2014

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Hi!

On 03.01.2014 19:14, Matthew Miller wrote:
> […] So those are my things. What do you think about them? What
> else should be included? What different directions should we
> consider? How will we make Fedora more awesome than ever in the
> coming year?

Okay, I'll bite (after thinking whether writing this mail is worth it):

I'm still undecided if I overall like Fedora.next or fear it. But more
and more I tend to the latter position and wonder if it might be wise
to slow things down: Do one more Fedora release the old style in round
about June; that would give us more time to better discuss and work
out Fedora.next and get contributors involved better in the planing.

The main reason for that: Fedora.next is a huge effort that seems to
make everything even more complicated. It imho is also sold pretty
badly right now, as you have to invest quite a lot of time to
understand what Fedora.next actually is. And Fedora.next to me seems
like something the core contributors push forward without having
really abort those Fedora contributors who don't have Fedora as one of
their top priorities in life.

Verbose: Yes, I really think the Fedora needs changes -- at some point
a few years ago we mostly continued to do things as they have "always"
 been done (read: since Core and Extras merged), without thinking if
those ways are still the best.

So I welcomed Fedora.next in the beginning. But I, as someone that is
not involved very much in Fedora any more, still fail to fully grasp
it. Yes, there are many mailing list or blog posts and some docs in
the wiki. But most of them are really way too long for people that
have busy days; a lot of those docs are also quite "meta",
nevertheless afaics failing to give a goal. Take
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora.next for example. It more a
description of a vague idea without saying much concrete besides
"design, build, and market three distinct Fedora products" (what is a
Fedora product?). There are a few links there, but even
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora.next/boardproposal is still
quite meta for something which is supposed to be the base for a
release that is eight months or so away. It doesn't explain what
problems are being solved or what happens to spins (KDE and such) or
how often (according to current plans) Fedora will be released in the
future.

What really gives me the creeps on those pages: "sub-committees of
FESCo, with individual governance structures". Those afaics are three
Product Working Groups Workgroups, two Fedora Rings Working Groups and
the Inter-WG for coordination. That sounds like a awful lot of
overhead an even more bureaucracy than we already have. And we imho
have way to much already (part of it is my fault!) – something I had
hoped Fedora.next would try to fix.

I these days wouldn't start contributing to Fedora, as all those rules
and guidelines that the wiki provides would scare me off. That's what
Fedora.next should fix imo, as we afaics need more contributors: I
more often than a few years ago find packages in Fedora that are badly
maintained or outdated. Contributing must be as easy as editing a
wikipedia page. Further: kororaproject.org, fedorautils-installer and
similar project show that there are people that want to make Fedora
better. But they do their work outside of Fedora and RPM Fusion;
fixing the issues directly at the root would be better for all of us.

And I really wonder if Fedora.next is really backed by those community
contributors that are not involved in Fedora to deeply. One reason for
that: Fedora.next mails like the one I'm replying to seem to get very
few responses -- especially considering the fact that Fedora.next is
something really important and brought to a list where small details
quite often spawn very long discussions. Sometimes it's different --
like the ongoing and long "3rd party and non-free software"
discussion. That shows that a lot of people still care, but don't
bother follow to closely what the workgroups discuss before it someone
gets to a point where it's more visible.

That's why I got the feeing a lot of contributors are simply waiting
for more concrete details to emerge before deciding what to make of
Fedora.next; or they simply at all don't care to much what the higher
ups do, as getting involved on that level can cost quite a lot of time
and can be frustrating (that's not a complaint, that's simply how it
is often; wasn't much different in my days, but noticed that more when
I wasn't that active an more myself).

I have many more thoughts in my head, but I'll stop here, as those are
basically the most important things that bother me right now when
looking at Fedora and Fedora.next.

CU
knurd

P.S.: Fixed subject (s/2013/2014/)
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