Fedora.NEXT Products and the fate of Spins

[Josh Boyer]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 3:16 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-01-30 at 14:53 -0500, Bill Nottingham wrote:
>> Jiri Eischmann (eischmann at redhat.com) said:
>> > >         That being said, as we go forward as Fedora.NEXT, we start to
>> > >         see more
>> > >         clearly defined divisions between Products, Spins and Remixes.
>> > >         Since
>> > >         these discussions needed to happen, we (FESCo) felt it was
>> > >         best to try
>> > >         to move the conversation public.
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > Part of the problem I have with this discussion other than the
>> > > alarmist subject is that we are discussing the "fate of spins" before
>> > > even coming out with concrete products out of the fedora.next
>> > > proposals.  That seems premature.
>> >
>> > +1
>> > I cannot agree more. We still don't have (at least I don't) have a clear
>> > idea how basics of Fedora.NEXT will look. So this discussion is really
>> > kinda premature. We should clearly define the products first, then we
>> > can discuss spins and the border between them and remixes. From bottom
>> > up please :)
>>
>> Blame me, I filed the original ticket. My concern was that we're (obviously)
>> doing work in the Fedora.next space around:
>>
>> 1) the three products (workstation, server, cloud)
>> 2) the base, which lives under them in some manner
>> 3) environments & stacks, which can live on top of them
>>
>> First, I'm making the assumption that those three products are not the
>> end-all/be-all of what Fedora can ever be. So we should have a defined
>> process for how new products can be formed. And that can tie into some
>> things that are now spins, if they want to go that route.
>>
>> Second, as we design how we build and ship all of those things above, it
>> stands to reason that implementation choices made there have the possibility
>> of breaking spins as they exist now.  That shouldn't happen in a complete
>> vacuum without warning, so it's worth discussing where things that are spins
>> now fit into that process.
>
> Looked at that way it's obviously an important question to answer
> indeed.
>
> I've written two posts on this topic and ripped them up for being
> excessively negative, but let me try one more time:
>
> I think part of the worry is the tension between having a product which
> is clearly focused around the GNOME desktop (please, can we just agree
> on this? I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but I don't think the 'but we
> haven't picked a desktop!' hedge is contributing to the clarity of
> discussion: it is patently obvious that Workstation is going to be
> GNOME), and what that means for all the other desktop spins.

I'll agree that it's the most likely outcome, sure.  I still think
there's value in not just assuming things though, and actually going
through the process/discussion.  Saying something is official before
it's official is stupid.

> If we decide the alternative desktops are a valuable part of Fedora -
> which seems to be a popular opinion - how do we fit them into a
> Product-based conception of Fedora?
>
> We can have a KDE Product, and an Xfce Product, and an LXDE Product,
> but...at that point haven't we just re-invented spins? It doesn't seem
> to quite work with the Product conception.

Agreed.  As I said in my reply to John, there's a larger branding
conversation to be had.

josh