Spins

[Matt Domsch]

On Sat, Nov 01, 2008 at 03:50:53PM -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> On Sat, 1 Nov 2008, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 10:00:36PM -0400, Chris Tyler wrote:
> > >
> > > On Fri, 2008-10-31 at 11:54 -0700, Jesse Keating wrote:
> > > > On Fri, 2008-10-31 at 13:27 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Having said that, Sugar and OLPC are a pretty big deal.  The spin has been
> > > > > approved by the board and is (or will be) an official spin.
> > > >
> > > > Small comment.  The board gave the Sugar spin the approval to use the
> > > > Fedora brand.  This doesn't automatically mean that it'll become a
> > > > produced and hosted spin in binary format.  All it means is that the
> > > > spin KS config can live in the spin-kickstarts repo and use the Fedora
> > > > branding should somebody create the binary spin from the config.  It
> > > > would still have to have a Feature proposed and approved by the spins
> > > > SIG and by releng before it would be an official spin.
> > >
> > > I agree: trademark approval does not automatically mean that the spin
> > > will be hosted and distributed by Fedora infrastructure. I can imagine
> > > that we'll eventually have a much larger number of trademark-approved
> > > spins than we'll want to host and distribute -- h&d decisions should be
> > > made by some combination of the spins SIG, releng, and infra.
> > >
> > > We need to decide terminology here: we have "official spin", "unofficial
> > > spin", and "remix" floating around. "Unofficial spin" is sometimes being
> > > used the way I think "remix" was intended to be used, meaning something
> > > that doesn't have approval to use the primary trademark.
> > >
> > > Can we settle on:
> > >
> > > - "Remix" for "not approved to use the Fedora trademark" (but eligible
> > > to use the secondary mark). I don't think these will normally be hosted
> > > by Fedora.
> > >
> > > - "Spin" for "trademark-approved", further subdivided into:
> > > -- "Unofficial spin" (trademark-approved but has not gone through the
> > > Features process, and not h&d by Fedora)
> > > -- "Offical spin" (trademark-approved and has gone through the Features
> > > processs, h&d by Fedora)
> > >
> > > ?
> >
> > This seems correct to me.  To reiterate, the "Remix" mark/design and
> > term were designed to do at least three things:
> >
> > 1.  Make it possible for anyone who was creating a derivative of
> > Fedora to drive additional community interest in our direction, even
> > if the derivative can't be promoted here because of its content.
> >
> > 2.  Decouple the community's ability to make derivatives from the
> > trademark approval process.  This way, anyone can create derivatives
> > and label them without special permission.
> >
> > 3.  Remove the "spin" jargon from what people external to our
> > community will see.  Only a very small subset of people know the term
> > "spin" in the context of Fedora.  Many more people understand "remix"
> > because it has almost equivalent meaning in lots of other contexts.
> >
> 
> So what should we do with a remix that is not approved but also not
> unapproved which is the current state of OLPC.  Do we give hosting via
> our alt mirror or do we have them wait for full approval.  If it is via
> the alt mirror.  What criteria do we have for hosting on alt?  I can throw
> some guidelines together if no one else cares / has opinions on it.


IMHO, anything hosted on Fedora infrastructure needs to follow the
Request for Resources process.  I have not seen such requesting
hosting for posting ISOs containing Fedora 10 with the Sugar desktop.

I missed something...
* The Board granted trademark approval for a remix including Sugar.
* https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OLPC notes a _goal_ is to have a
  Sugar remix.
* https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OLPC/Tasks notes "Sugar spin is
  official" which isn't quite right.  The concept has trademark
  approval.  Sugar is an accepted F10 feature, but a "hosted Sugar remix" I
  believe, is not.

AFAICT, a Sugar remix has not gone through the Fedora feature process,
no Infrastructure resources have been requested (by RFR or ticket).
If we're going to, from now on, have a Fedora Sugar release alongside
the KDE and XFCE, Developer, Games, Edu-Math... remixes then
Infrastructure needs for such need to be understood, documented, and
approved by FI as part of the feature process.

Barring this, FI does have at its discretion a limited ability to host
content that isn't "official remixes", but this is a very limited
resource (currently at 62% capacity before more remixes are added)
which also serves Fedora Secondary Architectures and serves some roles
for rel-eng too.  It's not unlimited, and it's not likely to become
unlimited in the near term.  (donations of multi-TB SANs, rack space,
power, bandwidth, are welcome and could provide additional
capability).

The BrOffice Spin [1] is an approved feature, and has secured its own
hosting.  I would expect the Sugar remix to do likewise.

If FI can accommodate that hosting, fine, but that isn't guaranteed
for any remix, official or not.  Because these remixes are growing in
number rapidly, faster than FI resources are growing, this becomes
quite painful - and yes, those who are proposed earlier have a better
chance of getting FI resources than those proposed later (or having
missed the feature deadline completely).

All this is to say, I'm not going to vote to force FI to host any
specific remix, "official" or not.  That's an unfunded mandate.  I
would hope FI could host "official" remixes before providing space for
"unofficial" remixes, but first-come-first-served trumps the
official/unofficial distinction.


[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BrOffice.orgSpin

Thanks,
Matt
(who needs to go scouting for more storage if this keeps up...)