Spins

[Paul W. Frields]

On Sun, Nov 02, 2008 at 06:52:01PM -0600, Mike McGrath wrote:
> >
> > 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.
> 
> No such thing currently exists, I'll get to work on that.

Having that sort of document available for potential spin owners would
be good.  I have no idea whether the Sugar spin owners knew they
needed to make a request for hosting.

[...snip...]
> > 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.
> >
> 
> I could be wrong but I don't think spins are a feature.  There's a spins
> approval process that is independent of the feature process and I think
> this is because the spin itself has no additional features, just in a new
> combination.

True that spins aren't the same as features, but they normally require
a feature page for tracking.  Part of the reason for this is to make
sure the spin gets promotion in the feature process.

[...snip...]
> > 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.
> 
> I think the confusion is a lack of policy.  I want people who say "I want
> hosting" to be able to go to a page and know the answer to hosting without
> someone arbitrarily saying "this can be hosted" and "this can't".  The
> would be sugar spin is in an odd state right now and, because the spins
> process takes so long, will be stuck there for many months until F11 beta.

Yes, and the Spins SIG page is not clear on how this works either, and
should be.  I'd ask that the Spins SIG work with you on the draft, at
least by reviewing it and asking questions that will help spin owners
understand what they need to do, and when, to get spins hosted.  Right
now the documentation I could find in the SIG basically says, "Maybe
your spin will be hosted," which isn't very enlightening.

I think the problem wasn't helped by having a lot of technical kinks
worked out fairly late in Fedora's Sugar stack.  Since we do want
spins to make it to the test phases, that would have kept a Sugar spin
out of the running this time around.  But none of this means the spin
owners can't, for example, put out information about their working
kickstart file and how people can use it.

> > [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BrOffice.orgSpin
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Matt
> > (who needs to go scouting for more storage if this keeps up...)
> 
> Really storage isn't the issue, policy is.  (or lack thereof).  I'll throw
> some guidelines together on Monday for approval.  There is some precedent
> for "non fedora" stuff to be hosted on FI, like fedora hosted.  In the
> meantime, how much of a commitment do we want to make to non-fedora stuff?

This is a good opportunity for FI to decide on a policy that gives
them proper oversight over space and other hosting resources.  In
cases where non-Fedora materials are a benefit to the Fedora community
we should allow for hosting those materials.  Upstream projects are a
good example.  Similarly, we'd have more interest in something like
the Sugar spin than, say, BrOffice.org, because it's (1) universally
applicable, and (2) has significant crossover appeal for a project
(OLPC) in which Fedora wants to promote participation.  Perhaps those
two criteria are part of a list of deciding factors for whether we
extend hosting.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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  http://redhat.com/   -  -  -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
  irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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