Fedora.next in 2014 -- Big Picture and Themes

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 08:34:23PM +0100, Robert M. Albrecht wrote:
> >* Although it's certainly not the only reason, Fedora as _solely_ a
> >   hobbyist desktop is not ideal for an upstream for RHEL server and
> >   cloud products.
> No other system can be reinstalled / upgraded every six months. That
> single fact IMHO kills all other use cases.

Fedora actually has a 13-month lifecycle, which is still fast but less
dramatic than that. And although that makes it *challenging*, it doesn't
preclude real use in non-desktop cases. I know because I've seen people in
real life doing all sorts of things, from high-performance computing to
running hosting services to high-frequency stock trading.

> If I need a stable Fedora-like server, I get CentOS. It's kind of a
> Fedora-LTS.

Sure -- fine for some versions of what stable means. I don't think Fedora
and CentOS directly compete -- they complement.

> The real innovation is happening on the desktop: power management,
> Wayland, Mesa, wifi/3g/4g, color-management, pulseaudio, ...

I don't think I want to get into an argument about where real innovation is
or isn't happening, but it's definitely happening in non-desktop areas as
well.

> I don't know anything about the statistics on Fedora contributors
> and their jobs. But if there are lot of hobbyists, students, ...
> these people are not able / interessted in large enterprise stuff
> like OpenStack, ... they work on devel-tools like languages and
> desktop-stuff, that's what they are using.

We have a mix. But hobbyists and students and non-enterprise users are
absolutely critical to who we are, regardless of the statistics. The desktop
component isn't thrown out in Fedora.next. The Workstation WG PRD proposal
specifically targets students, independent developers, small-company
developers, and enterprise developers, but also has a section about
welcoming other user segments.

> If Fedora want's more innovation in those topics, Fedora must
> possibly reallign the devel-community. Most enterprise-project like
> libvirt, freeipa, Spacewalk, ... are done by Redhat-people ? Or am I
> totaly mistaken there.

We've got a lot of that, for sure, but we also have a lot of enterprise
packages maintained by non-Red-Hatters. I'm not quite sure what you mean by
"realign the devel community" -- can you elaborate?


-- 
Matthew Miller    --   Fedora Project    --    <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>