Some recent changes

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 10/20/2009 10:28 PM, Matthias Clasen wrote:

> 
> 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 ?! 

No. I did not say or imply that. I know the team is busy and I
appreciate all the work that is being done but if you want help, you can
ask for it. I can volunteer (and have already volunteered before) to do
atleast some of the simple updates that happens on desktop components
all the time and let you folks concentrate on some of the other changes
including "polish".

Some of the problems are because there is no effort in growing the
community of people involved in Fedora who can and will help you and
share the burden of keeping the desktop related packages updated in
Fedora leaving you to focus on other important things. There are good
examples of teams doing that. FESCo, KDE SIG etc as examples. They
announce meetings with detailed agenda ahead of time, discuss changes
openly in IRC and I can look up the details of who made the changes and
why.

If you seriously want a longer release cycle, talk to FESCo about that.
Even without a longer release cycle, I think making such changes
post-beta is a bad idea and you could very well avoid that.

> '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.

Don't know how preupgrade will really help here but I am sure Will
Woods, Seth Vidal et all would appreciate more help.

> 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...

I don't think it is merely a different perspective but yes, I do care
about the current users as well or atleast I am not interested in
pissing them all off. I think if you believe you have put out crap then
you should take sometime to explain why the current changes are better
before doing them.  How do I know I am not just getting more crap pushed
out at me post-beta release? The change by itself doesn't bother me as
much as the method and timing of it.

Rahul