Fedora.NEXT Products and the fate of Spins

[Jaroslav Reznik]

----- Original Message -----
> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Jaroslav Reznik" <jreznik at redhat.com>
> > To: "Development discussions related to Fedora"
> > <devel at lists.fedoraproject.org>
> > Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2014 1:25:10 PM
> > Subject: Re: Fedora.NEXT Products and the fate of Spins
> > 
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > > Hash: SHA1
> > > 
> > > Apologies for the slightly alarmist $SUBJECT, but I want to make sure
> > > that this gets read by the appropriate groups.
> > > 
> > > During today's FESCo meeting, there was the start of a discussion on
> > > how to approve new Products into the Fedora family. As part of this,
> > > it naturally strayed into discussion of what we do about Spins as they
> > > currently exist.
> > > 
> > > Several ideas were raised (which I'll go through below), but we didn't
> > > feel that this was something that FESCo should answer on its own. We'd
> > > prefer community input on how to handle spins going forward.
> > > 
> > > So, in no particular order (because it's difficult to say which
> > > questions are the most important):
> > > 
> > > 1) Are Spins useful as they currently exist? There are many problems
> > > that have been noted in the Spins process, most notably that it is
> > > very difficult to get a Spin approved and then has no ongoing
> > > maintenance requiring it to remain functional. We've had Spins at
> > > times go through entire Fedora release cycles without ever being
> > > functional.
> > 
> > Spins are useful especially as they makes our community inclusive,
> > one thing we should be proud about (and sometimes it was harder, could
> > cause issues but everything is solvable).
> > 
> > For spins quality - it differs, it will differ but recent changes to
> > process were for good, more updates are still needed. Long time ago
> > we released what was build, I like how big step we did last few years.
> > It's not reason it wasn't functional before to ban spins.
> > 
> > If there's interest in spins like product, someone is willing to lead
> > this effort, I think in some way, it can stay.
> > 
> > > 2) Should Spins be eliminated entirely in favor of Fedora Remixes[1].
> > > The effect here would be that Spins are no longer an official part of
> > > The Fedora Project but are instead projects unto themselves which are
> > > permitted to consume (possibly large) portions of our tools, packages
> > > and ecosystem. Maintenance and upkeep of these spins then becomes
> > > entirely the responsibility of the downstream community that
> > > constructs them and has no mandatory draw on Fedora's marketing,
> > > ambassadors or quality assurance resources.
> > 
> > It's possible but much more resource hungry. The way how spins are set
> > helps these sub-projects deliver interesting piece of software.
> > 
> > But there are two questions:
> > - does every single spin makes sense as standalone spin? I really liked
> > the idea of Fedora Formulas, it's exactly the way we should go. If for
> > some reason formulas would not be enough for desired use case -> remix.
> > 
> > aka products + add-ons as formulas = spin
> > 
> > For people who missed it https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_formulas
> 
> Well I think this idea is interesting and we have discussed something along
> these
> lines in the Workstation working group. I mean at the end of the day we all
> want as much
> software as possible packaged for Fedora/Product. The question to me lies in
> the details
> of how this is done. For instance the idea we hope to explore are we develop
> the technical
> specification for the workstation is what kind of rules should apply to these
> potential
> 'formulas'. There are some obvious ones like, you can't for instance in a
> 'formula' to  replace a package
> that would break the core product for instance due to replacing a version of
> a package with one that
> got a different ABI. (This specific idea is quite well covered in existing
> Fedora guidelines, but I wanted to
> avoid derailing this discussion by choosing an example that I hope would
> generate discussion in itself :)

Good to hear you're thinking about it.

> 
> > - or we could go even further and ask ourselves, do we want to call
> > products Fedora? Or do we want products as remixes too? Based on
> > underlying Fedora infrastructure? This could for example solve issues
> > with our values - 3rd party repos etc.
> 
> Using the Fedora brand to only define a set of 'white box' packagesets is an
> option,
> but in some sense it means the end of 'Fedora' as a user facing brand.

Yes, it would be end of Fedora as user facing brand. And also pretty demanding
to do it for different products.

> > > 3) Should Spins be considered Products-in-development? In other words,
> > > should we only approve Spins that are targeted or destined for
> > > "promotion" to a fully-supported Fedora Product? This is a nuanced
> > > question, as it means different things for different Spins, for
> > > example Spins focusing on a target-audience (Security Spin, Design
> > > Suite Spin) vs. Spins focusing on a technology (LXDE Spin, MATE-Compiz
> > > Spin).
> > 
> > For target audience spins, see above Formulas. And once we have this,
> > I think spins as we know them right now could go then.
> > 
> > I'd like to avoid calling LXDE/MATE other tech spins as products in
> > development but we would have to product categories
> > 
> > - Release blocking products
> > - Non release blocking products with limited support
> > 
> > And to promote other products to be release blocking, WG would have to
> > be formally established, team should prove sustainability, willingness
> > to work on it and have resources allocated (own resources or get agreement
> > from other teams on help, doesn't matter).
> > 
> > Keep it simple and stupid.
> > 
> > So my two cents are - revive Formulas (or now let's call it Stacks now?),
> > have two categories of products but make it fair to be promoted...
> 
> The general issue with this secondary products is that they would lead to an
> endless
> debate about how they get promoted/not promoted by 'Fedora' on the Fedora web
> pages, by
> Fedora conference booths etc. Remixes in my opinion are better here as they
> make the division
> clear and should actually empower the communities in question to more
> effectively drive and market
> their specific product as opposed to spend time arguing over their placement
> or lack of placement on important
> fedoraproject.org pages and simmilar.

Same reason as for products outside Fedora brand - it would be pretty 
demanding to do so. On the other hand I think the rules could be set pretty
straight.

Jaroslav

> Christian
>  
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