Follow-up on Extended Life Cycle

[Yaakov Nemoy]

2009/7/23 Dennis Gilmore <dennis at ausil.us>:
> On Friday 17 July 2009 05:29:51 am Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> First of all, my apologies for the long email.
>>
>> That said, my apologies to Dennis Gilmore for stealing his action item,
>> too.
> Its ok.
>
>>  From yesterday's Board Meeting Minutes, it is suggested that the
>> following questions need to be answered:
>>
>> - What is the Board saying "yes" to?
>> - Trademark usage?
>> - Fedora infrastructure?
>> - What is the board responsible for deciding?
>> - What is FESCo responsible for deciding?
>> - Would ELC's request go against or detract from meeting Fedora's
>> objectives?
> Id also like to know how this fits in with Fedoras stated goals. i see that it
> benefits freedom,  but to me it conflicts with being first.  its hard to be the
> leader and innovate when you are supporting old releases.

By attracting more users in a safe funnel that encourages people to
use Fedora more, we can attract more potential contributors.

-Yaakov

>> - Would ELC's request go against or detract from meeting Fedora's
>> objectives?
>>
>> If you take into account the potentially increased participation of
>> corporate consumers in the Fedora Project -which we can not simply
>> guess-, then in the light of the Fedora Project objectives it becomes
>> the traditional "taking a step backwards in order to move forward".
>
> Ill also ask will the effort targeted towards extending fedora's life-cycle
> disappear when the next version of RHEL is released?  is this just because
> RHEL 5 is getting old?

Personally, i would say yes and no. Yes because RHEL is getting long
in the tooth, but that means the people who want an up to date stable
distro will have it. From what i understand, the issue on hand with
the ELC is that it's to provide a better upgrade path for stable use.
You can't upgrade a computer from RHEL to a later version of Fedora
without wiping it clean or doing some very hacky things. On the other
hand, there is usually a somewhat supported upgrade path from one
version of Fedora to another. With  more breathing space in the first
place, there's more incentive to use Fedora.

-Yaakov