Summary/Minutes from today's FESCo Meeting (2015-10-07)

[Adam Jackson]

On Fri, 2015-10-09 at 14:55 +0000, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote:

> Interesting taking the consumer perspective.
> 
> So where does FESCo intend to draw the line now that it has chosen to 
> head down this path.

I mean, I can't speak for fesco as a whole, but speaking for myself: I
reject the question.  I don't think "drawing a line" is a useful way to
think about these issues.  All engineering is compromise.

> For example is the next step for Fedora to dissociate itself with 
> upstream and start implementing "workarounds" instead of fixing things 
> where they belong to satisfy the end users needs and expectation as well?

I'm not sure if you're aware, but that is exactly the thing a
distribution is.  The software we package is not produced with a single
vision in mind, it does not all just magically fit together on the
first try.  From a quick grep, of the 16000ish packages in rawhide,
~5500 have at least one patch in their spec file, and there are about
18000 patches total.  Frankly I'm pleased it's that low.

You appear to be trying to set up a false dichotomy, and I reject that
model.  Of course we're going to continue to work with upstreams on
bugs and best practices.  It won't always be successful, it never has
been and it never will be, and we will always carry patches to make
Fedora work.  We will continue to work to reduce that delta, even
though we know that it will never be zero.

More to the point, any internal beauty and elegance in building the OS
itself is fundamentally uninteresting.  They are fine goals to have,
but they are only _good_ in proportion to the quality of system they
build, and the ultimate measure of quality here is utility.  If that
means I need two forks of a library in the OS because different apps
have incommensurate needs and uses of that library, so be it.

Like I said, reality is complicated.  Maybe it's unfortunate that
reality doesn't conform to our expectations, but as far as I can tell
that's been true for literally my entire life so I kinda stopped being
surprised and upset by that.

- ajax