Some recent changes

[Matthias Clasen]

On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 22:17 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:

> Making such changes in the end of the release means that we will have to
> rush to document them in the release notes which are already frozen for
> translations just as a single example of the problem of doing things now
> instead of earlier in the release cycle. Even minor tweaks tend to have
> a big impact.

Then we need a longer release cycle. After feature freeze, add a polish
period, followed by a string and documentation freeze. Seriously, do you
think we have been doing nothing all summer only to sneak this stuff in
late behind your back ?! 

I have added a section outlining these changes to the desktop beat for
the release notes.

> I spend a lot of time in the end user forums answering questions and I
> have to document them in the release notes if I don't want to spend even
> more time answering the same questions and believe me, any change in the
> default panel is going to get end users puzzled because they already
> have strong expectations from years of experience with the defaults.
> Easing the pain of transitioning from one release to another should be a
> important goal.

'No change' is obviously not the right answer to 'pain of
transitioning'. If we were taking upgrades seriously, then preupgrade
would receive enough attention to handle transitioning of user settings.
But that is not the case.

I think this dispute mostly comes down to difference of perspective: We
want to make the Fedora Desktop better, so that it can attract new users
(currently, they all go somewhere else). You are concerned about users
who have stuck with Fedora throughout the years and have gotten used to
all the crap and unpolished stuff we have been putting out...