[Ambassadors] During some of my review of the Fedora 12 "Constantine, " Fedora 12 Talking Points. :)

[Chitlesh GOORAH]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Paul W. Frields <> wrote:
> However, it probably should be featured somewhere other than the
> general release talking points.

Hello Paul,

I would like to hear the reasoning behind the removal of the FEL's paragraph on
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Fedora_12_Talking_Points&diff=141842&oldid=134124

As I understand the "administration" section should not be considered
as "general" information.

The wikipage Fedora_12_Talking_Points was to briefly introduce anyone
with information about the major work done by fedora contributors.
That paragraph about FEL was meant to direct those who are interested
in our FEL 12 work to
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraElectronicLab/TalkingPoints. Thus
keeping the wiki page Fedora_12_Talking_Points simple and straight
forward.

> That's one of the reasons we set up the new Spins sites:
>
> http://spins.fedoraproject.org/
> http://spins.fedoraproject.org/fel/

Those spin sites contain various information about the spin team and
spin product. In this case, the talking points were targeting F-12
release only. Thereby I believe it was wrong to strip down that FEL's
paragraph.


That said, I feel you are not aware what we are doing behind Fedora
Electronic Lab and where we are struggling. Let me quickly write it
down.

Everyone in the opensource community wants to be able to say to
his/her (doctor, architects, mechanical engineers,..) friends : "Hai
you can have an out-of-box opensource platform that meet your _daily
professional_ expectations". Unfortunately that day hasn't yet come.

But we can say there is one platform for microelectronics, this is
FEL. We care about making **opensource EDA software** useful for the
_real life_.

Unlike software engineering, there are a lot of IEEE standards to
follow, if not even the software is opensource it would be useless.
Some of those IEEE standards need to be bought by upstream, then
implement then give enhanced tools to the users as opensource. This
requires people having both "software" and "hardware" knowledge.
Unfortunately the opensource community is missing these people. But
those we have are very knowledgeable and their work are prestigious to
the whole opensource EDA community.

What should matter for you as a RH employee is that FEL is an example
for you to show how the "Fedora's 4Fs" is being used effieciently in
real life.

* Friends : We have contributors such as Joerg Simon who always finds
and redirectly potential contributors. Ricky and himanshu, and others
help in terms of infrastructure and websites. FredericHornain and
GeroldKassube always strive to get FEL a presentation slot.

* Features : Well unable to count and they target digital design,
analog design, embedded design, mixed-mode signal design,
schematic/layout/pcb design..., enhanced compliance with IEEE
standards,...

* First : First, to step in for bridging opensource software and
opensource hardware communities. First, to give value to EDA upstream
developers and bring upstream closer to users. First, to approach
commercial companies to find a tradeoff for interoperability, still
working on that.

* freedom : same values of that of fedora

That said there is a difference between FEL : the spin and the team.

The FEL LiveDVD spin is simply a "yum groupinstall 'Electronic-Lab',
nothing more.
The FEL team are people who strive to "get the shit done" as Max would say.

We need more contributors. Thereby we would like to get maximum
exposure. Even Fedora contributors don't know much about FEL. Please
do spend a few minutes to read:
http://spins.fedoraproject.org/fel/

What makes the FEL spin so special is that it is not _a desktop spin_
like other spins. There is more than 100 packages under the FEL
umbrella, which means we need more people for testing and as a
testsuite. This requires time and people. Thus FEL needs more
exposure.
We are building a testsuite here. Hopefully we might have time to
automate that process
http://git.fedoraproject.org/git/?p=fedora-electronic-lab.git

We also support the EPEL-5 branch.

I hope that now you undo your edit.

Thank you,

Chitlesh Goorah