[fedora-virt] Accepted F11 Virt Features

[Mark McLoughlin]

Hi,
	I'm not sure it's clear to anyone why we have this feature approval and
feature freeze process, so I thought I'd point to some wiki pages with
the background. See below.

	IMHO this boils down to communication:

  - we want people to know in advance what new virt features we're
    adding in F11

  - if we miss the feature freeze with any of those features we should
    be planning realistically whether to continue pushing for F11 or
    whether to punt to F12 because it won't have had time to stabilise
    it for the F11 release

  - if we feel that we can include it post freeze and stabilise it in 
    time, we should ask for an exception (a second opinion, basically)
    from rel-eng confirming that that's a sane plan

  - it's only right to keep rel-eng in the loop; they are the ones with 
    a global view of the Fedora release. I've found them very sane in
    the past when considering exceptions

	Anyway, the bits from the wiki:

  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Policy/Background

  The value of having features defined up front is many-fold:

  * Everyone has an idea of what everyone else is working on. This
    provides the opportunity for feedback and suggestions for
    improvement.
  * You get people interested--perhaps even helping out
  * You get some idea of areas that are going to need testing so that
    testers can build up experience and knowledge about the area
  * You generate excitement around what's being worked on
  * You avoid surprises at the end
  * Public accountability to do what we say we are going to do
  * Easier Release Notes creation for new features--everything needed is
    on the individual feature pages.
  * Ability to list out a set of features to be picked up or when
    talking to the media/press. Fedora ambassadors and any promotional
    efforts would find a feature list useful.

  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/FeatureFreezePolicy

  As of the feature freeze for a release, no new features or major 
  version bumps are allowed for packages already in the Fedora
  collection
  ...
  Note that ignoring the freeze process and introducing new features
  anyway will lead to your package being reverted and a reduction of the
  chances of an exception being made.

Cheers,
Mark.