Fedora.NEXT Products and the fate of Spins

[Les Howell]

On Wed, 2014-01-29 at 17:11 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 5:01 PM, inode0 <inode0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 3:33 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> >> On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:03 PM, inode0 <inode0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 2:57 PM, H. Guémar <hguemar at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> >>>> Hi,
> >>>>
> >>>> I think we should keep spins as long as we don't have a formal process to
> >>>> accept new products.
> >>>> Something like => proposal => crop (aka product-to-be) => validation =>
> >>>> product
> >>>> When we'll have that, drop the whole spin thing, any spin that isn't fit to
> >>>> be a product should be reclassified as remix.
> >>>
> >>> Why do we expect spins to be any more official products than they are now?
> >>>
> >>> I can't really imagine this ever working. Do you imagine a day where
> >>> Fedora has 20, 30, 50 official products? I don't.
> >>>
> >>> I'd rather not confuse what is made from Fedora bits with what is
> >>> based on Fedora bits but includes other bits. The remix branding does
> >>> not seem appropriate for spins that are made purely from Fedora bits.
> >>
> >> That's fair.  From a resource and quality perspective though, I'd
> >> rather not burden rel-eng and QA with having to maintain, create, and
> >> test spins.  They can be done entirely outside of Fedora.  They can be
> >> created and hosted on their own sites, etc.
> >>
> >> F20 improved spins overall, but that was because of a concerted effort
> >> with our existing resources.  If Fedora.next is going to succeed,
> >> those resources are already going to be overwhelmed with the 3
> >> products.  Spreading them thinner for little benefit in most cases
> >> seems irresponsible.
> >
> > So I am being pulled in both directions on this. One of the goals of
> > agility is to facilitate more things being made from Fedora (at least
> > that was a discussed goal at various times). I agree with that and
> > pushing aside the best things we have built from Fedora now
> > (understanding they have been problematic in various ways in the past)
> > seems to work against that goal.
> 
> There is a difference between "things being made from Fedora" and
> "Fedora making things for people".  I'm concerned that Spins have
> transformed into the latter.  There is nothing preventing someone from
> taking Fedora and making a spin and hosting it themselves.
> 
> > I don't accept the blanket assertion that the spins have little
> > benefit. Do we actually have any idea how many people install Fedora
> > from spins?
> 
> We had download statistics at one point that showed most of the spins
> were not downloaded much.  Maybe the Infra group still collects them.
> 
> > Irresponsible is bit loaded. I don't know that rel-eng will be
> > overburdened by running the script that builds them. I also don't know
> > that there aren't other creative arrangements that could be made to
> > facilitate the creation and distribution of spins largely or entirely
> > under the control of those creating them without pushing them entirely
> > outside of Fedora infrastructure.
> 
> Growing rel-eng could help with the resource issues (similar with QA).
>  If the people doing spins want to step up and do that, then some of
> my concerns are alleviated.  At least in terms of people resources.
> 
> > I guess I'd like those active in the spin community to make
> > suggestions here. I imagine spins and other new creations built on
> > Fedora to be things the project wants to promote, not push away. The
> > reality may be that we can't do what we do now in support of spins,
> > but I hope we can continue to do something that helps and encourages
> > those making them.
> 
> Promote is an interesting word there too.  I think we want to
> encourage people to create things with and on Fedora.  I'm not sure
> _promoting_ those things simply because someone made this is the right
> idea with Fedora.next.  This isn't specific to Spins though.  It's
> part of a much larger branding conversation that we need to have.
> 
> josh
I use and promote the use of the FEL spin.  I did a presentation on it
at the RSSC (Robotics Society of Southern California) and gave away 10
disks with the software on them.  I know that that is not much in the
grand scheme of things, but Electronics engineering and hobby uses of
electronics is a relatively small market compared to consumer uses.
However these are the guys that will build the next generation of users.
Robotics are at least one of the real growing sectors of Electronics and
software, and hasn't even reached much more than about 3% of the total
market that will soon be felt. Add the Internet of things, and all the
3d printing of all kinds that are being developed, home built milling
machines and other things that would probably be considered science
fiction even 10 years ago.  Linux is at the core of all those
developments, and I think the FEL spin is a great contribution to those
efforts.

Yes, it is a niche market, but it is one that introduces the power of
linux at a crucial inflection point on the next several generations of
products.