Fedora.NEXT Products and the fate of Spins

[Ian Malone]

On 30 January 2014 23:07, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Przemek Klosowski
> <przemek.klosowski at nist.gov> wrote:
>> On 01/29/2014 07:10 PM, Ian Malone wrote:
>>
>> On 29 January 2014 23:58, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>>
>> I consider myself squarely in the middle of those two camps.  I think
>> they have value to people.  I think they fill a niche, however large
>> or small it might be.  I also think they can be done by the people
>> wishing to provide them without relying on Fedora resources for
>> hosting and creation (outside of leveraging existing packages and
>> repositories).
>>
>> I don't consider that "getting rid of them" at all.  On the contrary,
>> I think it lets people have more control over their spins, allows them
>> to refresh them as they see fit throughout the release, and allows
>> them to market and promote them beyond a token mention on a Fedora
>> website.
>>
>> Some care is needed, if there are things getting packaged to fill a
>> role in a spin they may disappear from Fedora if the spin in question
>> does.
>>
>> On one hand, I am impressed by many spins as an excellent technology
>> demonstration. On the other hand, what should existing users of a base
>> Fedora do if they find an useful spin with a superior functionality? If its
>> function is not integrated and easily accessible from the base system,  they
>> must either dual-boot or re-install  from the spin.
>>
>> Therefore I prefer that the spins ultimate goal is to include the
>> functionality into generic Fedora. The same goes for  other bundling schemes
>> discussed here.  It's not that I object to  them per se, but I do think that
>> there's an opportunity cost involved: the person caring about the spin has
>> to chose between working on integrating the spin functionality in generic
>> Fedora, and developing the spin separately. I do recognize that the former
>> is harder, but the opposite tack has a potential to fragment Fedora. Spins
>> should be like branches in a VCS: let's not turn them into forks.
>>
>> I think the strength of Fedora comes from it being an excellent platform for
>> all kinds of FOSS software, and the associated network effect---the better
>> the platform is, the faster it gets better.
>
> "Spins" is a loaded term in Fedora that means exactly what you
> suggest.  An approved Spin, by definition, must only include packages
> (and functionality) that is contained in the generic Fedora
> repositories.  So the project seems to very much agree with you.
>
> Remixes can contain external packages and have the pluses and minuses
> that you highlight.  Some of the discussion to date has been
> suggesting or implying that "Spins" become "Remixes", but I think that
> things that are already Spins would likely retain the qualities you
> desire.  The discussion has a lot of tribal knowledge behind it, so if
> you aren't overly familiar with the history behind these concepts I
> can see how it would be confusing.

Indeed what Przemek Klosowski described (forking fedora) is what
making all spins remixes might do. Concrete example:  real-time audio.
If left to its own devices a music production spin would probably do a
realtime kernel and set priorites for jack on its own. However since
whatever change was made had to apply to all fedora the result was
that the default RT priority for jack was changed in the package (a
realtime kernel not being necessarily required
http://jackaudio.org/realtime_vs_realtime_kernel), so all Fedora JACK
users get a better chosen default (though they still need to make
manual changes to groups to benefit from it).

-- 
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk